JANE RULE RULE JANE

FREE VOL. 22 SPRING 2008 Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 SEE P. 21 P. SEE BC • BOOKWORLD NO.1 GREEN YONDER

GREEN YONDER PULL-OUT looks athome Mark Forsythe gardeners in YOUR GUIDE HOCKEY MANIFESTO THE WILD THE WILD TO BOOKS & AUTHORS

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• BILL DEVERELL DISTRIBUTEDBY700OUTLETSINBC see page4 www.abcbookworld.com B.C. AUTHORS 8500 MORE THAN Peter Slevininthe Gooderham and Gardeners Eliza

Slocan Valley. FIND P. 29 . COVER

ccording to the Grocery tures, salves and creams. She “feels sorry for children who never get to experience A Manufacturers of America, working with the earth.” some 70% of U.S. food already And if she could grow only one GM NO LONGER flower, it would be Calendula. “It is ed- contained genetically modified ible, medicinal, and incredibly hardy, and is the last flower to keep blooming traits by 2000. in the late fall.” ✍ Approximately 60% of the main U.S. crop—corn—is now genetically modi- Brenda Elder and her husband MEANS A CAR Gail, were transplants from Surrey drawn fied, and it’s mainly derived from pat- ented genes owned by one company, to the Slocan in search of self-sufficiency Monsanto. in 1972. This proved more daunting than Approximately 90% of the second- imagined, and Gail was forced to return biggest crop in the United States these to teaching. Brenda grew organic food days—soy—is genetically modified to be COMPANY for their family, and later developed a herbicide-resistant. Some 90% of that business around organic bedding plants. GM soy contains traits owned by Now each home garden Now retired from teaching, Gail is back Monsanto. in the fields every day, tending 13 varie- “Somehow, a can serve as an outpost for ties of organic potatoes. single corpora- The Elders consider their land part tion has managed safeguarding your health. of a larger ecosystem and, as a result, to use patent law large tracts remain wild for birds, tur- to gain de facto tles, deer and bears. “Naïve young pioneers from England “Those social structures, if one is a control of the na- ✍ and Scotland were lured to the valley by gardener, are inextricably intertwined tion’s two biggest Victoria Carleton and Steve MARK FORSYTHE enticing advertisements: “Grow apples with why, what, where and how we gar- crops,” writes Mounteer landed in the Slocan from and grow rich!” They found uncleared den,” says Gordon, “... that piece of land North Carolina farmer/researcher Tom Ohio and Oregon respectively. She spent land thick with towering trees and mos- that we have chosen to work with (or Philpott in Grist, “and managed to an- almost five years homesteading in the quitoes,” Gordon writes. which, in some cases, has chosen us) will nul the age-old right of seed-saving over Nass Valley in northwestern B.C, dis- Fruit trees abandoned so long ago still in some way influence who we are, our a broad swath of farm country. playing a gardening prowess that won bloom. Some Japanese families interned relationships, and the events in our lives, “Since the U.S. doesn’t require com- her a Harrowsmith gardening contest in in Slocan camps during WW II stayed each and every day.” panies to label GM ingredients, it’s im- 1985. After buying property in 1990, after the war. A wave of American Viet- ✍ possible to know how much of the U.S. they got to work creating their own gar- nam War resisters and Canadian back- The eight gardeners featured in The diet contains genes owned by Monsanto.” dens on forty acres. ✍ to-the-landers (some of whom formed Garden That You Are all come from some- Wilda’s Columbine is from her communes) added another layer of his- where else. Edda West is an immi- The situation is not quite so drastic grandmother’s seeds; and a rose bush tory. Or is that another layer of compost? grant from Estonia, by way of Toronto, in Canada, not yet, but each time some- from a neighbour honours that neigh- whose grandmother “imbued her with one piddles in their garden and grows bour’s deceased daughter. “It’s not just passion for the earth.” She gardens on an organic potato or carrot, it’s like the about a patch of dirt,” says Mounteer, ten riverside acres and plucks plants from little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the “it’s about people, about everyone they the wild, some for medicinal teas, tinc- dike. know and love.” The home garden isn’t merely a ✍ quaint diversion, or a laudable hobby, The Garden That You Are includes or a spiritual oasis. The home garden is sidebars on herbal medicinals, Japanese a battleground for healthy living and in- gardening, permaculture, the humble dependence—and that’s one of the rea- Eliza Gooderham potato (a food that kept the Irish alive for sons Katherine Gordon has and Peter Slevin centuries and became a campaign night- written The Garden That You Are are profiled by mare for Dan Quayle), biodynamics (the (Sono Nis $28.95). Katherine Gordon land as a living whole) and even the ben- The title tumbled out of a conversa- efits of swallow boxes (think mosquitoes). tion she had with her Slocan Valley Gordon also offers tips on tools, build- neighbour Brenda Elder who has ing up the soil and composting; a garden been working the soil and coaxing reading list; and a smattering of recipes. plants along for 30 years. With its mixture of practical advice and “You know, you work with your inspirational personalities, The Garden garden, your land, and what it is That You Are just might kick a few makes the garden and who you non-gardeners out the back door to are,” she said. get a start on some local food pro- ✍ duction of their own, or else make The Slocan Valley in eastern more people want to move to the B.C. is a fertile trough with a mod- Slocan Valley. erate climate and long, warm sum- The photographs by Rod mers. Gordon describes it as “The Currie and Quinton garden hard by heaven.” Gordon capture the Slocan Aboriginal people thrived in this 100- in the sweetest light. All that km-long valley for thousands of years; time spent outdoors serves Europeans arrived in the 1890s with these gardeners well: they’re all dreams of striking it rich in veins of sil- sun-baked, remarkably fit, and ver at places like New Denver, Slocan vibrant, content to be up to City and Sandon (now a ghost town). their elbows in compost. Next came the masters of self-suffi- 1-55039-160-7 ciency, Russian Doukhobors fleeing per- Mark Forsythe is the well-read & secution; then came the British invasion. well-travelled host of CBC Almanac.

Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 Contributors: Grant Shilling, Mark Forsythe, Ayla Harker, SPRING Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: BC BookWorld, Joan Givner, Louise Donnelly, Hannah Main-van der Kamp, 2008 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 Heather Ramsay, Cherie Thiessen, Shane McCune. Writing not otherwise credited is by staff. Produced with the sponsorship of Pacific BookWorld News We acknowledge Photographers: Barry Peterson, Laura Sawchuk. the assistance of BC Issue, Society. Publications Mail Registration No. 7800. BOOKWORLD Proofreaders: Wendy Atkinson, Betty Twigg. Canada Council and the Vol. 22, No. 1 BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405 Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics. Deliveries: Ken Reid Province of British Columbia, through the Publisher/ Writer: Alan Twigg Advertising & editorial: BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Ministry of Community, Vancouver, B.C., V6R 2S3. Tel/Fax: 604-736-4011 • Email: All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at Aboriginal, and Editor/Production: David Lester available on request. Annual subscription: $19.08 www.abcbookworld.com Women’s Services.

4 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 TRENDS

SPOT THE IMPOSTER: which is real? ELVIS NEVER LEAVES Madonna (1) Madonna (2) THEBUILDING Photographer to the would-be stars, Brian Howell explores the ethos of pathos in Fame Us

or a while it looked as if the Niftiest Title of the Year Award was going to go to Eau Canada, a book from UBC Press about Canada’s water supply. Then along came Brian Howell’s cleverly titled Fame Us (Arsenal $21.95), a photo Jack Nicholson (3) Jack Nicholson (4) study of celebrity impersonators. FBrian Howell’s quest to create a photo gallery of look-a-like “tribute artists” was sparked by his unplanned encounter with an Elvis impersonator at a Sunday gospel meeting in the Fraser Valley Bible Belt in 2002. Having previously published One Ring Circus, a photo study of the small-time pro wrestling circuit in the Pacific Northwest, Howell instinctively moved from one fan- tasy world to the next. By the time he attended a real-life wedding between a Shania Twain imper- sonator and an Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe in 2004, Howell was hooked. Technically, there’s little that is noteworthy about Howell’s pictures. It’s his non- judgemental approach to the subcultures of pro wrestling and showbiz impersonators that makes his work both appealing and beguiling. In his introduction to Fame Us: Celebrity Impersonators and the Cult(ure) of Fame, Stephen Osborne suggests Elvis was the catalyst for the burgeoning of the Hilary Clinton (5) Hilary Clinton (6) look-a-like subculture. “Until the death of Elvis,” he writes, “an impersonator was a deceiver, a con-man or fraud artist (as the newspapers like to say), or a character in a drama; but now impersonators are legitimate entertainers in their own right.” Many of the images in Fame Us are derived from Howell’s attendance at the Celeb- rity Impersonators Convention at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas—where the dealers are celebrity impersonators—as well as a reciprocal annual convention in Florida. At left are ten photos; five are taken by Howell. See how quickly you can spot them. 978-155152-228-9

Bono (7) Bono (8)

According to Fame Us, “There are now at least 70,000 Elvis impersonators around the Willie Nelson (9) Willie Nelson (10) world. When Elvis died in 1977, there were between thirty-seven and 150. At this rate of growth, The Times of London speculates that by 2020, roughly one-tenth of the world’s

SOLUTION:1, 4, 5, 8, 9 are the imposters. the are 9 8, 5, 4, SOLUTION:1, population will be impersonating Elvis.”

6 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 PEOPLE

Cry Freedom in Lesotho

“I taught,” says Paul Sunga, “I got in trouble, PICASSO chaired a conference on migrant labour and apartheid, got in trouble, did some journalism OF THE WOODS during the press blackout, worked for the Ministry of Health briefly, got in trouble and left.” he great Norval Morrisseau received his name That’s how biomedical researcher Paul Sunga describes his experi- Ahneesheenahpay, meaning Copper Thunderbird, after his ences in Lesotho, a small landlocked kingdom within South Africa, mother took him to a medicine woman for treatment of a fever in during the tense and dangerous period when apartheid was coming to T an end. 1950. Some elders argued he was not yet worthy of such a powerful Sunga blanches at the suggestion that his second novel about the name, but he recovered and was introduced to Ojibwa shamanism by Indian diaspora, Red Dust, Red Sky (Coteau $21), might qualify as The Great Lesotho Novel. “The idea of the Great Lesotho Novel is funny,” his grandfather. Issues of identity resonated within Morrisseau ever since. he says, “but I would leave that to someone from there.” Red Dust, Red Sky begins with the arrest of a young boy for the The remarkable, tormented murder of a security man in Lesotho, life of Morrisseau, the man gen- then recalls the death of a erally regarded as the Father of student activist at the hands of Contemporary First Nations art, the South African police in is worthy of an opera, so Métis Johannesburg, years before. playwright Marie Clements Sunga’s central character, of Galiano Island has fashioned Kokoanyana, is a young girl a multi-leveled stage play, Cop- of Indian origin who hopes to per Thunderbird (Talonbooks discover the identity and $15.95) to explore his complex- fate of her father. Just as tiny ity. Lesotho is stifled by South Copper Thunderbird relates a Africa, Kokoanyana’s life is Faustian tale of the world-revered constricted by lies and delu- artist who became a Grand Sha- sions. man within the realm of Ojibwa Sunga is currently Director cosmology while succumbing to of International Development at the effects of family abuse, alco- Langara College and a consultant holism and extreme poverty—in- with CIDA for bilateral programs in cluding wanderings on the streets Bangladesh and Ethiopia. As a of Vancouver’s Downtown biomedical researcher with Eastside. a doctorate in experimen- The result is a composite vi- tal medicine, he continues to work in developing sion of a fractured life that ranges Marie Clements Paul Sunga from the Fort William Sanitarium countries. 978-1-55050-370-8 in 1956 (where he was treated for TB) to the Sandy Lake Reserve near Lake Nipigon in 1965 to the Kenora Jail in 1973 to the Ste. Rose Plato called philosophy “the great- Catholic Detoxification Centre in 1975 and to est good that ever was or will be Los Angeles in 1987. TEACHING Halfway through the play, when the voice given by the gods to mortal man.” of the young Morrisseau regrets selling his paintings, a Gallery Room Chorus echoes the PHILOSOPHICAL lympic weightlifting silver medalist opinions of white supporters and a Flooding Paul Rossetti Bjarnason whole Room Chorus represents the conflicting views FITNESS O heartedly agrees, so when his daugh- of his Ojibwa community. ter asked him, “What is philosophy,” he felt Clements depicts Morrisseau as an internally determined to answer her question fully. As a result, Bjarnason has written Stargaz- embattled visionary unable to come to grips with Paul Rossetti ers: Stories of the First Philosophers (John his overall character. Three Morrisseau charac- Bjarnason: Hunt Publishing, O Books, UK $19.95), an ters—boy, young man and old man—hold lively uplifting thoughts attempt to popularize philosophy by depict- debates over each development of his life, alter- from a former ing ancient philosophers in the act of being nately defending and antagonizing one another weightlifter philosophers. and giving the impression that Morrisseau is pass- “The ancient philosophers remain supreme ing his own judgments on himself. exemplars,” he says. “They are an inexhaust- In one rare moment, the Three Norvals ible source not only of wonder and delight, speak as one, “I am Norval Morrisseau. I am an but also of a practical wisdom. artist, a storyteller. I am a mystic. I am a very “The question How should one live? was of religious person. I am a free man, a force. I am fundamental importance to all of them. I be- humble. I am Jesus Christ. I am the Creator. I lieve their ideas are capable of leading us to- am an Indian and I will save myself.” ward flourishing lives, to a kind of living that ✍ is consistent with our very survival as a spe- Born in 1962, Marie Clements founded cies.” urban ink productions, a Vancouver-based After winning a silver medal for Canada at the Aboriginal and multi-cultural production com- Mexico Olympics in 1967, Bjarnason taught sec- pany that creates and produces Aboriginal ondary school in Vancouver for twenty-two years, works of theatre, music, film and video. published educational handbooks with his wife Recently Clements adapted her surrealistic Valerie, completed a philosophy degree—and play The Unnatural and Accidental Women into started writing about philosophers. a screenplay called Unnatural and Accidental, While completing his thesis on Epicurean the film version of which was screened at the ethics, Bjarnason was particularly inspired by Vancouver International Film Festival in 2006. the works of the French scholar Pierre It concerns a 30-year-old murder case involv- Hadot, whose philosophical views accentu- ing female victims of violence in Vancouver’s ate an existential dimension. 1846940583 Skid Row. 978-0-88922-568-8

9 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 DAMP: Contemporary DAMP is a long overdue critical Vancouver Media Arts engagement regarding the specifici- ties of the contemporary Vancouver Edited by Oliver Hockenhull media arts scene. DAMP includes & Alex MacKenzie over 25 contributions from such artists as Laiwan, Fiona Bowie, Ann Marie Fleming, David Rimmer, Warren Arcan, Randy Lee Cutler, Clint Burnham, Jayce Salloum, and others. DAMP is a visually exuberant, art- infused, full-colour statement.

isbn: 1-895636-89-2 | $40 | April anvil press

Imagining BC: Land, Memory & Place Edited by Daniel Francis Some of Canada’s best-known writers, all members of the Federation of BC Writers, are featured in this anthology, including Pauline Holdstock, Harold Rhenisch, George Fetherling, Howie White, Katherine Gordon, and, M.A.C. Farrant. The book features an introduction by editor and historian Daniel Francis.

isbn: 1-895636-90-6 | $18 | March recent titles — in stores now!

health cultural studies drama

isbn: 1-895636-86-8 | $18 isbn: 1-895636-85-7 | $20 isbn: 1-895636-87-6 | $15

10 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 reviews NON-FICTION

come back to hockey, where players gradually became the tragically flawed definitions of HOCKEY NIGHT IN B.C. complex, heroic, unpredictable. And every night the narrative Lorna Jackson on her love of hockey and the search for the ghost of her father grew more surprising and ex- hilarating. It was also a time and Cold-Cocked by Lorna Jackson hypnotic and beautifully written who abhor the easy father doesn’t come place to come back to parts of (Biblioasis $19.95) fantasies of making it with cliché, the hyper-mas- home from work. A myself I’d looked away from, Markus Naslund or other favour- culine rhetoric.”✫ suicide note left in staring back when I thought my here is more pain in this ite Canucks. (She has a definite his car under the father was a killer and sporting book than a Gordie thing for Trevor Linden, which Lorna Jackson grew Burrard Street events had become, in George THowe elbow to the makes her a true Canucks fan.) up in Vancouver watch- Bridge appears to con- Orwell’s terms, “orgies of ha- chops. In Cold-Cocked Lorna Cold-Cocked is a manifesto of ing hockey with her fa- firm the worst. tred.” Jackson writes of hockey and what Jackson imagines hockey ther, “sprawled on the Jackson was 12 at the ✫ SHILLING loss and reconciliation. She writing should be. “I like re- living room carpet GRANT time of his disap- Over the course of two sea- writes with anger, wit and search that pokes at hockey while my dad colonized pearance. Two years sons Jackson travels to Canucks insightfulness. The book is one through the bars of cinema and the recliner with a big hunk of later her father resurfaces, his games from her home on Van- part memoir, one part a television studies in which getting cheddar cheese in one hand hair dyed, with a new name and couver Island in Metchosin with fan’s notes. But not any fan – as off on a game is more properly and a Labbat’s blue in the driver’s licence. After a brief her teenage daughter Lily. Jackson writes “Players don’t called spectating other.” time in a psychiatric unit her Jackson also writes of place and make meaning; spectators do.” pleasure. The Then one au- father returns home to his fam- the west’s role in a nation’s Taking trips to interview NHL machine tumn after- ily. hockey psyche. As she notes, “I Canucks players in the locker ignores peo- noon in Jackson will never have the take a boat to watch hockey.” room, Jackson must balance the ple like me, 1968, whole story of her father’s time The hockey narrative is given notion that fiction writers are women Jackson’s away—so she reconstructs. a great boost with the Todd trained to look, with the reality Jackson follows the dictum of Bertuzzi-Steve Moore Orwellian of an athletic cup that’s level her former teacher, BC novelist orgy. The publisher’s notes sug- with her chest. Jack Hodgins, who implored: gest that Cold-Cocked is a way of The title of Jackson’s book is write what matters, what mysti- describing the Todd Bertuzzi ‘in- useful as it uses the word cock fies us, what needs telling and cident’ (with a focus on Todd, which is integral to understand- sorting out. ✫ not his victim Steve Moore). But ing NHL hockey and part of the title could easily have re- what attracts-distracts Jackson’s Her father was a World War ferred to the shock of Jackson’s push-pull relationship with the II bomber pilot and she re- husband (writer Tom Henry) players. Jackson slips into many searches that era in hopes of leaving her toward the end of learning more about him but as the book. Call it Husbandless in Jackson notes, “History is huge Metchosin. and vague when you are To reclaim herself and her looking for a person in it.” body she turns to fitness (the With Jackson’s fa- book is one part insightful gym ther disappearance diary). Self-conscious in the gym her love for the she is painfully reminded by a game goes miss- friend that she is off the radar of ing as well. the young exercisers in the gym. Jackson moved Ultimately Jackson encour- on to other pas- ages us to create our own narra- sions including tives from the game and create music, when our own meaning. Her take on she toured as a Hockey Night in Canada’s colour country musi- commentator Don Cherry is cian and had a spot on, “he sticks to a simplistic few lost years. narrative that invites only one, She became a over-determined reading of the born again fan game.” during the Jackson’s mix of the puck and 2002 Winter the personal create a dense and Olympics watch- rewarding read with precision ing Canada win detail sentences. She shoots - she its first Olympic scores! 189723130X Gold Hockey medal in fifty Grant Shilling is the author of The years. Her ra- Cedar Surf: An Informal History of tionale: Surfing in British Columbia “Vancouver (www.cedarsurf.com). His sport com- in 2003 was a mentaries can be read at his blog great place to https://sportscrap.wordpress.com/

Lorna Jackson admits she has a thing for Trevor Linden. Her next book will be Flirt: The Interviews (Biblioasis $16.95). A collection of comic short fictions where each story takes the form of a bogus interview with celebrities. 1897231385

11 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 reviews NON-FICTION A HUNK, A HUNK OF BURNS LOVE Jack Whyte, author of books on the Knights Templar shares his passion for ballads

Forty Years in Canada by Jack Whyte unshakable good hu- To capture, with an these was at the Canadian Na- ✫ (Heritage $29.95) mour occur when he is image terse, tional Exhibition’s Scottish Along the way, Whyte de- reminded that “literary A different scene in World Festival, where he stood scribes his arrival at the Edmon- n his foreword to a recent pretentiousness” has every verse, alone on a field before thou- ton airport to take up a teaching biography of Robert Serv- consigned his favourite For here’s a country sands of people. post in the town of Athabasca, Iice, the successful and pro- verse form “to the gar- that demands The forty-five narrative po- ninety miles north of the city. lific novelist and former actor bage can of history” and Fair play, Rob, at the ems, which form the core of this His disillusionment with the edu- Jack Whyte described the magi- caused it to be excom- poet’s hands. memoir, are linked by sections cational system is specific to Al- cal day in his childhood when municated from the lit- JOAN GIVNER of prose that describe their gen- berta where the response to his he heard a recitation of The erary canon. A friend who wit- esis and place them in the con- Universite de Poitiers diploma Shooting of Dan McGrew. From Whyte’s own exercises in the nessed the enthusiastic response text of Whyte’s career in was “we don’t talk French in cat- that moment on his literary taste genre include pieces for public of the audience created an illu- Canada. For a wedding anniver- tle-country.” Nevertheless it will was set, and his heroes were performance before large minated scroll of the poem, and sary party he wrote Thank God resonate with every teacher who Robert Service, Rudyard crowds, and for private occasions 20,000 copies of it were eventu- for John and Betty Stein, immigrated to North America Kipling, and later his fellow- among friends. One of his most ally sold. Whyte was called on to Most men today, they will snidely say, from Britain, Europe, and Aus- countryman, Robert Burns. popular works resulted from a recite the piece on many occa- On a scale of one to ten, tralia only to find their qualifi- Now Whyte has detoured 1973 invitation to propose the sions. The most memorable of Are as prone to cheat as to eat red meat cations from major universities from his two series of novels toast To the Immortal Memory And reduce their wives to tears... called into question and found based on the Arthurian legends at the annual Robbie Burns Sup- So thank God for John and Betty wanting. Some made up the per- and the Knights Templar for an per of the Royal Canadian Le- Stein ceived deficiencies with courses upbeat memoir of “personal, of- gion in Lethbridge. It was a And their forty years... from departments of Education; ten trivial reminiscences” to daunting assignment because many simply found other work. showcase his prolific talent for the year before Tommy Doug- For his step- Whyte, who was clearly a versifying. This is not a compel- las had proposed the toast. son’s coming gifted and inspirational teacher, ling tell-all confessional work; Whyte decided to adapt of age, he was one of the latter. He turned Jack Whyte’s Forty Years in the bard’s own verse from wrote, For first to singing and entertaining Canada is much lighter fare to Tam O’ Shanter and in Mitch, at in such venues as the Calgary give rein to his life-long passion two 45-minute sessions Twenty- Stampede show and the for popular ballads, folk-songs produced A Toast to One: Tradewinds Hotel in Calgary. and story poems with their satis- Canada—Our Adopted Congratu- Then, benefiting from that ex- fying rhyme schemes, repeti- Land, a fifteen stanza lations, perience, he moved on to a suc- tions and refrains that are easy poem, of which this is Mitch, your cessful cross-country tour with a to memorize and fun to per- the tenth stanza: first lap’s one-man show Rantin,’ Rovin’ form. “If a song strikes me im- Oh, Robert Burns, could run; Robin—A Night With Robert Burns, mediately as being wonderful,” you but see You’ve left boy- that he wrote and performed he writes, “I can learn it within This mighty and superb hood behind, himself. He became a television minutes—the lyrics and melody country, you’re twenty one; scriptwriter, had a successful ca- practically burn themselves into I think your Muse A formal, legal reer in communications and, my mind.” ✫ would hide her heid, adult, fully grown more recently, wrote a dozen in- So great would be And from this day forth, ternationally best-selling novels. We learn that when Whyte your bardic need son, you’re on your The many fans who have wit- immigrated to Canada in 1967, own... nessed Whyte’s skill as an enter- his luggage contained a multi- tainer will, no doubt, relish volume set of Child’s ballads, and After visiting his wife’s every last rhyming couplet of his he eventually launched a one- native province, he wrote narrative verse, but, in the opin- man crusade “to rescue narra- Saskatchewan: ion of this reviewer, the prose tive verse from postmodern Only a few, a loyal few sections are the strongest part oblivion.” In fact, some of Endured and stayed to learn and grew of this memoir. Details of his pri- the few lapses in his To love Saskatchewan and knew vate life and his career as a nov- The beauties of her face; elist are not forthcoming, but it’s For, when she smiles, her counte- clear Whyte has a lively intelli- nance gence to go with his exuberant Is open, loving, and her glance behavior on stage. 978-1-894974-22-6 Will melt your heart and brace your stance Joan Givner writes regularly on bi- With pride, and ographies and autobiographies. She strength, and grace. lives in Mill Bay.

From bar chord to bard: Jack Whyte’s first promo photo taken in Calgary in 1968, a year after his arrival in Canada.

Whyte plans to complete his current Knights Templar trilogy with a forthcoming novel, Order in Chaos (Penguin). It will be followed by a trilogy set in 14th century Scotland.

13 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 MEDIA by Shane McCune for Southam papers in Calgary and Vancouver.] Then again, each owner that followed made the one before Legendary U.S. reporter and newspa- DO YOU KNOW look better. In retrospect the Southams’ paternalism seemed gen- per critic A.J. Liebling once called the erous compared with Black’s condescension. Now the press “the weak slat under the bed of WHAT YOU’RE hacks gather at bars and say, “At least Black spent money democracy.” In on newsrooms instead of starving them like 21st-century this bunch.” (In fact, Canada, it’s Black did spend on the more like the National Post, but other newsrooms were quicksand un- squeezed to help pay der the house. NOTREADING? for it.) The HQ editorials f you disagree with that view, just try finding From Southam to provoked outrage, especially at the Montreal Gazette, any mention of Marc Edge’s Asper Nation: where reporters retaliated by withholding their bylines. Canada’s Most Dangerous Media Company Black to Asper, That may sound like a harmless gesture, but it infuri- (New Star $21) in any of the news outlets con- ated the Aspers, who retaliated by threatening suspen- trolled by CanWest Global Communications. Marc Edge sions. The staff escalated the battle through leaks to other ILike Conrad Black before them, CanWest chiefs media and a website called, provocatively enough, the Leonard and David Asper are fond of saying they exposes the emergence “Gazette Intifada.” can’t control what Canadians think. But they do like to Digging in his heels, David Asper famously borrowed control what we think about — or what we don’t think of convergence a lyric from R.E.M. in a December 2001 speech: “I about. can say to our critics, and especially to the bleeding hearts “It’s not just what you see in the paper,” as former of the journalist community, that it’s the end of the world Montreal Gazette publisher Michael Goldbloom as they know it, and I feel fine.” has put it, “but what you don’t see.” of the enterprise too blatant). Once the Aspers’ head In Asper Nation, Edge recounts a less-publicized part By some estimates CanWest Global dispenses up to office had taken a stand, no paper was allowed to run of that speech that spoke eloquently of the younger 70 per cent of the news consumed on the West Coast an editorial opposing it. Aspers’ mindset: “If those people in Montreal are so on any given day. This seemed to contradict CanWest’s position as set committed, why don’t they just quit and have the cour- The Winnipeg-based Aspers own both of metro Van- out in its brief to the government’s Heritage Commit- age of their convictions? Maybe they should go out and, couver’s dailies, most of its “community” papers and the tee on Dec. 10, 2001: “Each (of our newspapers) is re- for the first time in their lives, take a risk, put their province’s top-rated TV channel, along with dailies in lentlessly local in its coverage and fiercely independent money where their mouth is, and start their own Victoria and Nanaimo, several more small papers on in its editorial policy.” newspaper.” Vancouver Island and Victoria’s “CH” television. A month later CanWest founder Israel “Izzy” A sneering rich kid who inherited his newspapers From Victoria to Montreal it owns 11 major dailies Asper was singing a different tune: challenging wage-earners to start their own . . . well, (including five of the top 10 in circulation) and boasts “As publisher-in-chief, we are responsible for every that’s one way to inspire your employees, I guess. But that its TV broadcasts reach 94 per cent of the nation. single word which appears in the papers we own, and he could hardly challenge them to quit CanWest and Lack of coverage for Asper Nation within the Asper therefore on national and international key issues, we work elsewhere, because there’s not much elsewhere left. Nation is to be expected—and it likely does not ema- should have one, not 14 official editorial positions.” According to Marc Edge, that was the whole point nate from a diktat from head office. As Edge makes clear, At the time of the furor CanWest was still using the of the Aspers’ buying spree: Eliminating competition. the worst part of the censorship within CanWest is that Southam family name for the chain; its stylized torch logo Controlling editorial pages is all well and good, but it’s most of it is now self-inflicted. appeared on each editorial. Edge notes: “The Southam the ad revenues that count. Leonard Asper, Edge writes, “I began to censor myself,” said Stephen “brand,” which had been bought by CanWest from was passionate about “convergence” — using the news- Kimber, a fellow journalism professor and long-time Conrad Black, stood for quality journalism. Just as papers and TV network to promote each other and the columnist for the Halifax Daily News. He told the Wash- importantly, it stood for local independence for publish- web to promote both. ington Post. “I would remember, ‘No, I’m not supposed ers. Southam head office had historically taken pains to Convergence was a buzzword in media circles for a to write about that.’” allow its newspapers to reflect the temper of their com- few years, but it has yet to live up to the hype. Maybe Kimber quit after writing a column he knew would munities, even if that meant disagreeing with ownership.” that’s because the Aspers, who made their millions in be spiked. It criticized the Asper’s brief, clumsy 2001 broadcasting, didn’t know much about the newspaper experiment with “national” editorials written in Winni- AS ONE WHO WORKED business they spent $3.2 billion to acquire. Here’s peg and reprinted in all chain papers except the Prov- for the chain under three owners, I’d say that’s an overly Leonard in a 2001 speech: “In the future, journalists ince (presumably because identical editorials in both rosy depiction of that stodgy operation. [Full disclosure Vancouver dailies would make the cookie-cutter nature clause: I have known Edge for 30 years; we both worked continued on page 16

Publisher vs Writer ILLUSTRATION

FARRIS

JOSEPH

15 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 MEDIA continued from page 15 More depressing still is the litany of feckless govern- dia to its banana-republic condition. It contains little in will wake up, write a story for the web, write a column, ment efforts to rein in media concentration, from the the way of original research — no new studies and few take their cameras, cover an event and do a report for Davey Commission of 1970 to the CRTC’s September if any fresh interviews — but is a thorough and concise TV and file a video clip for the web.” 2007 hearings on convergence. compendium of relevant information and quotation, as Really? And what will they do after lunch? How effective were the latter? In December the regu- the voluminous notes attest. (Note to New Star: that lator approved CanWest’s takeover — with U.S. money welter of information deserves a better index.) EDGE MAKES IT CLEAR THE — of Alliance Atlantis Communications, which holds brothers inherited their belligerence from their father, Canadian rights to 13 cable channels including BBC EDGE’S PROSE HAS A a tax lawyer, politician, entrepreneur and jazz dabbler Canada, History Television and Showcase. tabloid momentum to it. He’s at his best cutting to the who died in 2003. As Edge tells it, Asper père sued pretty Yet Edge concludes that the best hope for undoing chase but a little wobbly when he wanders into meta- much every partner he ever had and was still pursuing the “Asper disaster” would be CRTC regulations limit- phor (“ . . . the proverbial straw that would catapult the a libel action against a critic at the time of his death. ing media owners to a 50-per-cent audience/readership CanWest controversy onto the national stage.”) Though once leader of the Manitoba Liberal party, share in any market. Like many of us baby- he was a fiscal conservative whose views on most things I’m not so sanguine boomers who have left the — except his buddy Jean Chrétien — dovetailed about the regulator’s grasp More news articles and newspaper business in dis- neatly with those of Conrad Black. of the problem. In 2001 it entertainment reviews are gust, Edge has little to say A couple of early chapters in Asper Nation are de- allowed CanWest and BCE about online news beyond voted to Black. Much of this is necessary to set the Asper Enterprises (owner of CTV boilerplate generated in one noting that CanWest empire in context, but Edge dwells on him perhaps a and the Globe and Mail) to wants to monopolize that, little too much. Do we really need to know about his merge their print and newsroom and printed chain- too. lordship’s connection with the shadowy Bilderberg broadcast news operations, wide. Entire pages of western It’s true that so far Group? using one reporter to cover there’s little to recommend Some of the most dispiriting passages in the book stories for both . . . provided papers are being laid out at the “citizen journalists” are those showing how funding from CanWest and each medium kept a sepa- the Hamilton Spectator. touted by net geeks as the other big media has compromised journalism schools. rate editor. Which is a little replacement for dead-tree In 2000, when CanWest bought Southam, Donna like saying a town can get by technology and hierarchi- Logan, the founding director of UBC’s Sing Tao with only one wholesale bakery so long as there are two cal news organizations. If you find an actual news story School of Journalism, said of convergence: “The dan- retail bread shops. No matter how each of them slices among the ill-informed bloviating online, chances are ger would be that you have one very powerful editor it, it’s still the same bread. it originally came from one of those dinosaurs of “old who is making all of the decisions and you have fewer CanWest quietly abandoned the centralized editori- media.” Newsgathering takes skill and money, and so people making the decisions, fewer people making the als in 2003, but they have been accelerating central- far no one has found a way to make news websites pay. choices of the stories that get covered.” ized news handling. More news articles and But there are worthwhile online news sources such By the next year, the Sing Tao newspaper had with- entertainment reviews are boilerplate generated in one as the Tyee (thetyee.ca) and e-book technology is im- drawn its funding of the school and Logan had a much newsroom and printed chain-wide. Entire pages of west- proving all the time. If you can download a digital book cheerier attitude about convergence. Testifying at CRTC ern papers are being laid out at the Hamilton Spectator. for a fee every month, why not a digital newspaper for a hearings into CanWest’s licence renewal she said: “Con- Meanwhile layoffs and buyouts proceed apace; some fee every day? With no need for expensive presses, in- verged journalism offers an opportunity to … [free] up newspapers have half the editorial staff they had 15 or dependent news groups might rise again. reporters to do stories that are not being done and are 20 years ago. Not surprisingly, readership is headed that 978-1-55420-032-0 vital to democratic discourse.” way, too. As Edge readily concedes, events keep over- Two months later CanWest donated $500,000 to the taking his research, and not for the better. school. (And here Edge can’t resist a cheap shot at Lo- Still, Asper Nation is the best guide available to the Shane McCune “took the buyout” from The Province. gan’s successor, who criticized his last book, Pacific Press.) machinations and missteps that brought Canadian me- He now lives in Comox as an independent journalist.

The Girl in the Backseat ½ Norma Charles Writing This young adult novel tells the story of a young girl who escapes from an authoritarian religious commune in the the West Kootenays by stowing away in a Mini — a trip that will take her across Canada with adventure and danger at every Coast step of the way. In Love with Place ISBN 978-1-55380-056-9 5-1/4 x 7-5/8 184 pp $10.95 pb Edited by Christine Lowther & Anita Sinner The Old Brown Suitcase ½ Lillian Boraks-Nemetz A new edition of the award-winning novel that tells the true story of a young girl who escapes the Warsaw Ghetto This collection of over thirty essays by both during WWII, hides under an assumed name and then later well-known and emerging writers explores what it takes up the challenge of making a new life for herself means to “be at home” on Canada’s western edge: in Canada. in Clayoquot Sound, Haida Gwaii and other west ISBN 978-1-55380-057-6 5 1/4 x 7 5/8 202 pp $10.95 pb coast areas. The writers describe falling in love with the rainforest, the ongoing struggles to preserve its integrity, its beauty, in the face of clearcuts and tourism. The question asked is why live in the “wild,” cut off from amenities, living on floathouses, or at The Anachronicles the end of a road or an inlet. The answers are various ½ George McWhirter but they include an understanding that one finds These unusually rich poems are both proto- and post-colonial. “home” and oneself in the midst of unspoiled nature. McWhirter enacts the discovery of the new world, looking The authors include Susan Musgrave, Betty both back at the Spanish and the British in their first landings Krawczyk, Brian Brett, Alexandra Morton, Kate Braid and forward to what becomes of that new world, with all its and many others. Includes 30 colour photos. present-day pop culture.

ISBN: 978-1-55380-055-2 6 x 9 240 pp $24.95 pb ISBN 978-1-55380-054-5 6 x 9 100 pp $15.95 pb

Available from your favourite bookstore or order from LitDistCo Ronsdale Press Visit our website at www.ronsdalepress.com

16 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 HEALTH MY BODY, MY ENEMY Harper’s bazaar is an oddly uplifting medley of medical memoirs

fter overcoming her own a joke. At night I could feel anger wash- pituitary gland.) I could lift things, and the house keys no ing over me in waves. I became even The doctor prescribed pills and I longer slipped from my fingers. I began bout of severe illness, angrier because I knew that there was stopped eating sugar—for months I had walking long distances. My bowel move- Janis Harper, co- no reason for the anger, and that made been drinking root beer in cans, think- ments became pleasant (I hadn’t even A me angry too. ing that caffeine and sugar might get my noticed how wretched they had become), founder and editor of The Republic of I was depressed and in a fog, and energy up—and within a week I could and my mind became clear again, which seemed to be constantly hungover. I feel the symptoms begin to leave my was perhaps the greatest gift of all. I could East Vancouver newspaper, has gathered couldn’t sleep more than two hours at a body. The fog in my head lifted, the feel myself returning to intellectual life. memoirs of close calls with death and/ time. I became afraid of The diagnosis was a gift of meeting people. I couldn’t knowledge as well as health. or demeaning debilitation for Body bear to make an appoint- Now I knew something of heal- Breakdowns: Tales of Illness & Recov- ment: The world became ing, and how ill health makes heavy and there seemed to the world invisible. For a while ery (Anvil $18). be too many things to do. I the doctor who made my di- Given the subject matter, you’d think was losing weight as well, for agnosis seemed to me to be the collection would be grim—but it’s no reason that I could see. I touched with genius, and it frequently comedic and invariably en- presumed that an unspeci- took months for the projection lightening. The stories of mostly middle- fied “wasting disease” was to wear off and for me to real- age perseverance remind us that bodies overtaking me. One day in ize why I had stayed away from are like cars; they can’t run forever with- the supermarket, when I doctors for thirty-four years, out encountering serious maintenance could hardly walk because for he knew almost nothing of issues. How and where you try to get my feet were hurting so diabetes and was unable to them fixed is a maze of possibilities and badly, and my ears were ring- treat the side effects when they choices. ing, a friend I hadn’t seen for returned, or to regulate my The following excerpt by Stephen some time came up to me fluctuating sugar levels. I had Osborne is about coping with diabe- and said how well I looked to tear myself away from him tes. 978-1895636-86-4 (so lithe, so svelte!)—I could and seek out health wherever barely form words in my I could find it. The Islets of Langerhans mouth. A short time after I turned to the “literature,” For most of a year my health had been that I woke up in the morn- a great sinkhole of medical deteriorating rapidly. Symptoms ap- ing and heard a voice say: bafflegab and self-help non- peared and never went away: I pre- “Osborne, you have diabe- sense (a book in the public li- sumed that I had begun to age too tes.” A simple declarative brary warns diabetics not to quickly and that I should prepare my- sentence. smoke marijuana because it is self for death. “Diabetes” was merely a “an illegal substance”), and I was urinating every hour, and my word to me then; I knew began monitoring my own vision was often blurry: symptoms per- nothing more about it. But blood sugar. The pain in my haps of a collapsing prostate and advanc- the directive seemed clear legs subsided slowly, and even- ing blindness. I hadn’t been to a doctor enough, and I went down tually I started wearing tights Stephen Osborne: since 1966: Was I now paying the price the hill to the clinic where I one of 21 contributors to Body Breakdowns under my trousers to soothe for too many late nights? My knees and learned that indeed I was the nerve endings in my skin. elbows ached; I could barely pick up my suffering from a condition of the blood pressure in my eyes disappeared. Slowly Now I was walking without pain. Com- feet when walking; the icy tingling in my brought on by a defect in my pancreas, my body began to work as it had so long plications made me angry only in a mild fingers and toes I presumed to be in the “islets of Langerhans,” to be pre- ago when I had been healthy. The tin- way, because I was no longer lost in a “pinched nerves” or some form of arthri- cise, and that the name of the disease gling in my fingers went away, and I rage: Instead I began to make my way tis. I began dropping things: coins, keys, was “diabetes,” a condition described (as could go for half a day without empty- into the world (later I discovered the pens flew from my fingers. Most dismay- I would later read) by a Greek physi- ing my bladder. I realized that I had therapeutic power of cinnamon and al- ing of all was the growing anger that ac- cian in 150 BC as “a melting of the flesh never known what health was. Certainly pha-lipoic acid). I pulled on my tights companied me everywhere: This was the into urine.” So it must have been my pan- I had been unable to remember it dur- in the mornings and felt like a secret most disconcerting of symptoms, per- creas—or perhaps the islets of Langer- ing the time of my sickness, which, as Elizabethan courtier. I was learning to haps because anger doesn’t feel like a hans—talking to me early that morning, health came to me, I understood to have pick up things left undone for years, and symptom at all. I was continuously in a and now I try to include my organs in been about four years. Soon I was awash to begin them again. near-rage, and began to frighten peo- my thoughts whenever I can. (An inter- in normality: My eyesight improved, and ple who had known me for years. I esting exercise: try acknowledging your I had to get out an old pair of glasses Stephen Osborne is the publisher of Geist couldn’t laugh at a joke; I couldn’t make spleen sometime, or your liver, or your because the new ones no longer worked. magazine, home of the Beer Map of Canada “Our bodies are amazing things and will continue to surprise us with either their resiliency or their betrayals. The only thing we can count on is that with age comes change and only for the worse. You can fight it all the way to the grave in stubborn denial, or you can accept that once things start backfiring, you’re starting down a slippery slope and the ride ain’t gonna be pretty. PHOTO Unfortunately, for better or worse, we don’t all get the CLARKES bodies we deserve.”—Bonnie Bowman, contributor LINCOLN

19 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 HISTORY EXTRAORDINARY CANADIANS A NORTH POLE RECLAIMED How photos by surveyor Frank Swannell helped repatriate a 19th century Haisla mortuary pole from Stockholm

here are more than 5,000 Frank Swannell photos in the Provin- cial Archives, and researcher Jay Sherwood has sifted through Tmore than half of them for Surveying Central British Columbia, A Photojournal of Frank Swannell, 1920-1928 (Royal BC Museum/UBC Press $39.95), his second book about the remarkable surveyor. Having spent three summers visiting the Sweden finally locales that Swannell surveyed, Sherwood has returned this compiled a superb record of Swannell’s vast G’psgolox contribution to the province during the pole in 2006. It is considered 1920s when he was camping with his crew “the first in an area stretching from Prince Rupert to totem pole the west, Smithers to the north, Prince repatriated George to the east, and Bella Coola and from Europe Williams Lake to the south. to a First Swannell followed Alexander Mackenzie’s Nations route to the Pacific, mapping the explorer’s community.” path in accordance with Mackenzie’s jour- nal, and photographing many of the land- marks that Mackenzie described. More importantly, his camera and journals have provided a lasting record of the cultures and people that he met, including some charac- ters described in Theodora Stanwell- Fletcher’s classic wilderness memoir Driftwood Valley. Swannell’s photograph of a nine-metre- high G’psgolox mortuary totem pole, carved in 1872, is one example of his unpaid socio- logical fieldwork. This historic G’psgolox pole, first erected on the banks of the Kitlope River near the foot of Gardner Canal, was commissioned by Chief G’psgolox of the eagle clan to give thanks for the fact that relatively few of his Haisla people died dur- ing the smallpox epidemics of the 1860s. This pole remained in place as a geo- graphic marker and cultural symbol for dec- ades until the Swedish consul in Prince Rupert, with the aid of a local Indian agent, decided the Misk’usa village on the Kitlope River was abandoned. At the time, Sweden was one of the few countries in Europe that did not already have at least one major totem from the Pacific Northwest, so they had the pole cut down in 1929 and sent it to the Folken Museum Etnografiske in Stockholm. The Haisla instigated negotiations to have the pole repatriated in the 1990s. They carved two replicas of the pole. One was sent to the museum in Stockholm. The other replica was erected at the original site in Misk’usa. Frank Swannell’s three photographs of the pole were essential to the process of reclamation. In 2006, Sweden returned the original totem pole to the Haisla in Kitimat. It is, according to Sherwood, “the first totem pole repatriated from Europe to a First

A rediscovery of the great figures of Canada’s past A rediscovery of the great figures Nations community.” Swannell’s surveying work and photos prior to World War One are also featured in Sherwood’s first book, Surveying Northern British Columbia (Caitlin 2004). “His pho- tos appear in most books that cover the BC Interior in the early 20th century,” says Sherwood, now a teacher-librar- ian in Vancouver, “yet he is seldom given more than pass- ing credit.” While maintaining his primary residence in Victoria, Swannell worked throughout most of British Columbia for at least 40 years, taking time to fight in World War One and join an anti-Bolshevik force in Siberia in 1919 where he was wounded in the shoulder. “To be an explorer penguin.ca was my great aim in life,” he told the Daily Colonist in 1963. He died in Victoria in 1969. Swannell’s many summers in north-central B.C. are com- memorated by the Swannell Ranges, Swannell River and Frank Swannell, Kootenay Mount Swannell. 978-0-7726-5742-8; Distribution by UBC Press. River, 1902

20 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 LOOKOUT #30 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 • [email protected] a forum for & about writers: LOOKOUT Jane Rule hen Hunter S. Thompson died, Rolling Stone publisher JWann Wenner devoted an entire issue to the gonzo journalist, recognizing his importance to the publication. We feel much the same way about Jane Rule, so we’ve prepared this 4-page supplement as a pull-out section.

Cartoon by Rand Holmes, 1978. Reprinted by permission of Holmes estate.

21 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2008 REMEMBERING JANE RULE

a family farm in New Jersey where her paternal 1960s she became “proud and relieved to claim department warned her about pursuing a liter- States, Jane Rule was soon disenchanted with the grandfather built a replica of Robbie Burns’ the label Canadian.” ary career, telling her she could either become a competitive and demeaning atmosphere of writ- cottage and filled it with children’s books. After At 16, her first sexual experience was a les- first-rate scholar or a third-rate writer. Rule re- ing classes at Stanford University. When she opted the family moved to California, she spent sum- bian relationship, but given her moralistic up- plied that she much preferred the latter. Rule sub- for a teaching job with a private school for girls ISLAND OF THE mers on a remote, 240-acre ranch among the red- bringing and the forbidding climate for sequently sent that discouraging professor every in Massachusetts, Concord Academy, she fell in woods that belonged to her mother’s parents. In homosexuality in the early 1950s, she says she re- book she published and dedicated a book to her. love with Helen Sonthoff, a creative writing in- California, her best friends were Chinese and Japa- mained celibate during her attendance at Mills “I guess I'm still not a very nice person,” she once structor who was married to Herbert nese American children, and she was baffled by College, a posh women’s school in Oakland. She noted. Sonthoff, a German who had fled the Nazi the concept of racism. had wanted to study English at Stanford but she After she received a bachelor’s degree in Eng- regime during World War II. From a tender age, Jane Rule was notoriously was repeatedly rejected by numerous schools until lish from Mills in 1952, Rule began working on McCarthyism was rampant rebellious against authority figures, particularly a trustee at Mills College enabled her to be en- her first novel when she was living in England in the United States and extra- teachers. She and her beloved older brother Art rolled on a probationary basis. Because her test and taking some classes at University College, Lon- marital lesbian relationships changed schools constantly, as much as three times results were higher in science and math, she was don. Having gone to England to pursue a rela- were simply not to be tolerated, per year. In one class of 14 girls, there were five initially not allowed to major in English. Eventu- tionship with a female lover, she nonetheless so Jane Rule moved to Van- Janes so she willingly adopted her nickname Jinx ally she got her way, became friends with John couver in the fall of 1956, tak- and it stuck ever after. At age ten, her myopia was but the head of Hulcoop, a doctoral candidate ing refuge in a four-room flat corrected by glasses but her family moved fre- the English at UC who later accepted a rented by John Hulcoop. Ac- quently and she was hampered by dyslexia. Six- teaching job with the Eng- cording to Sandra Mar- feet tall at age 12 and unaccomplished at lish faculty at the Uni- tin’s obituary of Rule for The learned to swim in her backyard pool where she schoolwork, Rule was strongly supported by her versity of British Globe & Mail, Hulcoop and HEARTand her partner Helen Sonthoff were dot- parents who accepted her non-conformist ten- Columbia. Re- Rule briefly became lovers. At ing lifeguards with a great supply of pop-up books. dencies. If her teacher complained that she had turning to age 40, Helen Sonthoff came ✍ fallen asleep in German class again, her mother the United to Vancouver to visit Rule, at Jane Rule was also one of the first writers I ever would calmly reply, “Well, you're boring her age 25, and they resumed their or six decades, interviewed. I first met her thirty years ago when again.” By age 15 Jane Rule decided she ought to intimate relationship. They Jane Rule Jane Vance “Jinx” Rule was Talonbooks publishers David Robinson and be a writer. “I felt that most of the books I was would remain living as a cou- Karl Siegler reprinted her non-erotic love reading were lies,” she later recalled. “I was mor- ple until Helen Sonthoff died in 2000, at age one of the most mature, story, Desert of the Heart. She was the funniest and ally superior and quite obnoxious. That set me 83. Rule was deeply disheartened by her part- sanest person I had ever met. against the monstrous patriotic stupidity that was ner's death, as she had been when her father died humourous and responsible Nine years later, after we started BC everywhere, the lack of trust, the sense of hatred at age 88 in 1994. voices in Canadian letters, and for BookWorld, Rule agreed to be one of three writ- and the false discipline.” While Helen Sonthoff gained a foothold in ers on the board of directors for Pacific BookWorld That same year she was expelled, five months the UBC English department as a teaching as- twenty years she was a close friend News Society. [The others were Howard short of graduation, for an article she wrote in sistant, Rule pursued her fledgling writing ca- White and George Woodcock.] reer, read scripts and became the assistant director fto this publication. her school paper protesting the allocation of Jane Rule received the second Terasen Lifetime school funds for ‘charm school’ classes. In par- at the university’s new International House for Achievement Award for an Outstanding Literary ticular, Rule took objection to being foreign students. Even though Rule had only a Although she is admired for her Career in British Columbia in 1996. She was shown how to walk. bachelor’s degree, she also intermittently taught Jane Rule groundbreaking 1964 novel Desert of the Heart, awarded the Order of British Columbia in 1998 When the instruc- lower-level English courses at UBC until 1976 BIBLIOGRAPHY: in which two women fall in love in Reno, Nevada, and the Order of Canada in 2006. tor told the class to when she and Sonthoff relocated to Galiano Is- Jane Rule was long concerned with issues of truth Her reputation continues to grow. imitate her, Rule land on a permanent basis. “I arranged my life FICTION: and freedom beyond the realms of sexuality. Pro- ✍ Desert of the Heart did—cheekily— so that I taught every other year at UBC,” Rule (Macmillan, 1964) files invariably begin by mentioning her six-foot- Born in New Jersey on March 28, 1931, Jane and was tossed from said. “It took 25 years to get there as a full-time This Is Not For You frame and her husky voice, but she was much more Rule was the middle child and oldest daughter of the class. Consequently writer.” She stopped teaching at age 43. She (Naiad Press, 1970) than a human lighthouse signalling the way for Carlotta Jane (Hink) and Arthur she wrote an article ex- sometimes said she came out as a lesbian long be- Against the Season increased tolerance and self-acceptance. , a free-thinker who graduated (Doubleday, 1971) Richards Rule pressing her opinion fore she came out as a writer. Theme for Diverse A vibrant conversationalist who loved to laugh, from the naval academy at Annapolis and rose to that girls should be continued on next page Instruments drink and smoke, she was revered in the Gulf Is- the rank of lieutenant-commander during World taught how to walk to the (Talonbooks, 1975) lands as ‘the Bank of Galiano’ because she pro- War II. His favourite expression was, “I’d rather nearest college. The prin- The Young In One vided low interest loans to the disadvantaged. be right than president.” Another's Arms cipal expelled her for insub- (Naiad, 1977) Equally important, literally dozens of youngsters She passed her first four years at Wynchwood, ordination. Her reputation as Contract With The World a ‘moral hazard’ would make it dif- (Naiad, 1980) ficult for her to gain acceptance to Middle Children, Short stories (Naiad, 1981) college. Outlander, Stories and Also at age 15, Jane Rule’s outsiderism essays (Naiad, 1981). increased when she read Radclyffe Hall's Inland Passage The Well of Loneliness. Although she began to rec- (Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1985) Memory Board ognize her own lesbian nature, her enthusiasm (Macmillan, 1987) for the once-banned novel was hesitant, at best. After the Fire “It was a polemic by a famous English lesbian (Naiad, 1989) pleading for an understanding of homosexuals NON-FICTION: and lesbians, whom it described as men trapped Lesbian Images in women’s bodies!” Rule recalled. “It was a very (Doubleday, 1975) brave book but also a very bad book. The main A Hot-Eyed Moderate character was six feet tall and had a deep (Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1985) Detained at Customs: voice. I thought, ‘That can’t be who I am! Jane Rule Testifies at the Will I have to live in some ghetto in Paris “I“I amam notnot aa Little Sister's Trial and be a freak?’ It was such a scary (Lazara Press, 1995) thing.” Rule later described Radclyffe as “about the biggest male chauvinist pig you could writerwriter whowho sitssits NEW: find. Gradually Rule developed a theory that one chiefly makes Jane Rule’s essay collection, progress by learning from the Loving the Difficult bad examples of others. “I was downdown toto discoverdiscover (Hedgerow Press $21.95) five before I discovered that will be launched at Heritage Hall being a girl had serious in Vancouver on April 26 and drawbacks, six before I dis- on May 3 at the community covered being left-handed whatwhat II think.”think.” hall on Galiano Island. 978-0-9736882-6-9 was unacceptable and nineteen and travelling in — JANE RULE, 2004 Europe for the first time before I had to apologize

DAVID ROBINSON PHOTO DAVID for being an American,” Jane Rule with Alan Twigg at Montague Harbour, Galiano Island, 1978 she later wrote. In the

22 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2008 23 BC BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2008 REMEMBERING JANE RULE

continued from previous page A heavy smoker and avid drinker, In 1964, Macmillan in England Jane Rule died, with strength and dig- published Desert of the Heart after it was nity, of liver cancer complications on rejected 22 times in the United States. November 27, 2007, in the same room Jane Rule immediately became “Cana- in which she and Helen Sonthoff had da's only visible lesbian” and risked los- first slept when they came to Galiano ing her job at the university. She often in the mid-1970s. Initially she had noted that one argument made in her wanted to leave the island for palliative defence at the time was that not every care in Vancouver, alleviating others of author of a murder mystery novel is nec- the task of caring for her, but she was essarily a murderer. Canada’s laws were persuaded to remain on Galiano where changed to no longer prohibit homo- local physician Dr. David Beaver sexual acts between consenting adults oversaw the round-the-clock care that that same year but prior to the appear- was provided by Rule’s niece and her ance of Desert of the Heart, in her words, gay partner—both named Allison— “we were jailable.” who inherited the house. The novel had been completed by “I have no ambition to live to a great 1961, just prior to Rule’s 30th birthday. age,” she told Douglas Todd in Although Macmillan was concerned 1994. “I think old age is for the pits. I’ve about the possibility of an adverse reac- seen it. To outlive your usefulness is not tion by Nevada casino employees, very to me a great thing.” little substantive editing was done on the Many of her comments during her manuscript. Rule never resided in Reno, Jane Rule with David Robinson and Audrey Thomas final illness were typically funny. She Nevada, but her parents did, enabling staunchly avoided all malarkey about life her to get to know the city during sev- Jane Rule: after death. “Don't say I ‘passed away’ or eral visits during which her younger sis- “I also think that a relation- ‘passed on,’” she joked, “or I'll come back ter took her to various sites. Rule only ship based on sexual fi- and haunt you.” worked in a casino for six nights as a delity is silly. I don’t have A jam-packed memorial gathering change girl, from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., and anything against sexual fi- was held at the Galiano Community she had little interest in gambling. delity, but... making sexu- Hall on Sunday, December 9, 2007 Jane Rule moved to Galiano Island ality the one commitment during which friends, relatives and ad- in 1976, coincidental with her first at- that you give to the other mirers recalled her personality. Her lit- tack of chronic and crippling arthritis person seems archaic erary executor and close friend in her spine. As a senior member of a and goes back to men Shelagh Day praised her “enor- closely-knit community, she soon be- owning women and mous social appetite.” Svend came an integral, supportive figure, wanting to know that their Robinson sent condolences from lending money, providing guidance, children are their own.” France; former Lieutenant Governor etc., and gaining the nickname “the — from an interview conducted Iona Campagnolo, whose grand- bank of Galiano.” Helen Sonthoff and Jane Rule by Joanne Bealy, July, 14, 2006. father had helped build the hall, sent a A resolve to forge community and message praising Rule as “a remarkably group connections was reflected in her courageous role model.” Other com- fiction, dating back to This Is Not For ments included: You, a novel about college friendships. Jane Rule’s testimony in the Supreme Having written for mainstream • “Jinx was the most generous, Memory Board and After the Fire are pri- Court of B.C. on behalf of Little Sis- magazines such as Chatelaine and wise, quick-witted and loving person marily concerned with divergent per- ter’s Book and Art Emporium on Oc- Redbook, as well as the lesbian journal I’ve ever met.”—Libby Walker, sonalities who accept community tober 24, 1994, during a constitutional The Ladder back in the 1960s, Rule be- Jane Rule's younger sister bonds, incorporating the elderly as cen- challenge to Canada Customs’ practice gan writing a column called So’s Your • “What a wonderful, wonderful tral characters. The Young In One An- of seizing materials destined specifically Grandmother for the Toronto-based gay woman. Wow.” other’s Arms and Contract with the World for a gay and lesbian bookstore, was pub- newspaper The Body Politic after its of- —The Reverend Margaret Edgar are similarly concerned with mutual lished as Detained at Customs: Jane Rule fices were raided in December of 1977 • “Jane made an excellent boss. She compassion and love born of strength, Testifies at the Little Sister's Trial (Lazara by Operation P, an anti-pornography made me feel important and respected. not weakness. The latter concerns the Press, 1995). Specifically, Rule was re- unit that charged the publication for To clean the pool, she paid $10 an hour difficulties faced by a variety of artists sponding to the seizure by Canada Cus- its series on intergenerational relation- for 15 minutes of work at age 11.” as they approach middle age without toms officials of her novels The Young In ships, specifically a piece called Men —Zack Morrison, local youth having gained much outward success. One Another’s Arms and Contract With Loving Boys Loving Men. During her ten • “She taught me how to live a life that Admired and befriended by the likes the World, as well as the movie version of years of contributing to the paper, she mattered. Jane Rule is the tallest tree on of Kate Millet and Margaret Desert of the Heart—a 1985 feature film maintained a lively correspondence Galiano Island.”— Judy Baca, artist Atwood, Rule became known directed by Donna Deitch and star- with editor Rick Bebout. • “What she most believed in was throughout the world as one of Cana- ring Helen Shaver, Patricia Still widely known for her ground- freedom—freedom of speech and da’s most articulate spokeswomen on is- Charbonneau and Audra breaking novel Desert of the Heart, Rule freedom to love who you liked. sues pertaining to personal freedom and Lindley. is the subject of a Genie-awarding win- Jane is a beacon in dark times. social responsibility, but she never clam- Interviewed by Xtra West magazine, ning documentary, Fiction and Other She was generous. She had quite an oured for the limelight. Little Sister’s co-owner Jim Deva re- Truths; A Film about Jane Rule, made by insight into human nature. I would like “Politics really are to clean up the called the importance of Rule’s galvaniz- Aerlyn Weissman and Lynne to thank you, Jane, for all the laughter. house,” she says. “You have to do it ing testimony that day: “She was in a Ferney in 1995. She has also received —Margaret Griffiths every week. I don't find it interesting, wheelchair at that time and I got the hon- the Canadian Authors Association best • “She asked the important questions just as I don’t find sweeping the floor our of wheeling her up to the stand. As I novel and best short story awards, the and let people hear their own answers.” every week interesting. I do it. I vote... was rolling her up and looking at the American Gay Academic Literature Ken Bebout, Body Politic editor I prefer to work wherever there’s a pos- judge it was like, ‘You know this is a very Award, the U.S. Fund for Human Dig- • “There’s dinosaurs. There’s the sibility of changing things... I really be- important person. You listen to this per- nity Award of Merit, the CNIB’s Talk- Romans. And there’s Jane and Helen. lieve through the counter-movements son.’ That’s what I was trying to project. ing Book of the Year Award and an The times we shared are priceless.” in society change can be made. We’re ‘This is the best we have. If you cannot honorary doctorate from U.B.C. —Eli, Jane Rule’s nephew living witnesses of it.” understand our community, listen to this Rule consistently encouraged and • “Jane’s gift was her enormous human As someone who views marriage as woman and she’ll explain our commu- supported other artists and would-be curiosity. Jane loved many people. She problematic because individuals should nity to you.’ She spoke very quietly, very artists, including students from the loved each of us freely and uniquely.” not require permission from the state eloquently. I think her testimony really nearby Galiano Island Film and Televi- —Shelagh Day in order to cohabit, Rule looked did help make that judge realize that we sion School. During her illness, Rule of- Above the stage for the memorial askance at the eagerness of gay col- really were talking about our community fered her final collection of short essays, gathering, Rule’s own words were leagues to gain the legal right to marry. and how censorship is so offensive, so Loving the Difficult, to Hedgerow Press, posted for all to see: “I hope I’m remem- “A lot of us old guard feel very dubious deeply offensive. Before that, I don't the imprint of neophyte publisher bered for being lusty and feisty and full about it,” she said. think he really understood it.” Joan Coldwell. of life.”

24 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • SPRING • 2008 reviews NON-FICTION

the Nlaka’pamux It turns out that competition from another stage THEM THAR (Thompson), the Scotsman James performer, Jack Crawford, a ‘miner’s angel,’ Anderson, often long-haired U.S. army scout who Irishwoman described as the was a theatrical partner of Buf- of Nellie Cashman, a Robert Serv- falo Bill Cody and Wild Bill HILLS 1858 lifelong prospector ice of the Hickok. and spinster who Cariboo After Buffalo Bill drunkenly The Trail of 1858: British Columbia’s Gold Cariboo’s best-known packer. travelled by dogsled Gold Rush, shot Crawford during one of Rush Past by Mark Forsythe and Greg Judge Matthew Baillie Begbie. north of the Arctic Cir- had some their shows, Crawford took his Dickson (Harbour $26.95) Those infamous camels, im- cle, as well as Richard own Wild West show north to ported but never used. The pa- Wright’s introduction to Barkerville and Victoria. In ark Forsythe and Greg ternalistic autocrat James the ‘poet/scout’ Jack 2004, Richard Wright and Amy Dickson of CBC Ra- Douglas. Stagecoach driver Crawford. Newman revived Crawford’s Mdio’s BC Almanac build Stephen Tingley. Joseph Trutch, reputation with a stage show books like folks in Saskatchewan who constructed the first After Jack called Campfire Tales of Captain used to raise their barns. It’s a Alexandra suspension bridge in Crawford’s Wild Jack Crawford at Barkerville’s community affair and everyone 1863. Herman Otto Bowe and West show Theatre Royal. is invited to pitch in. the Alkali Lake ranch. Statistically, it was easier to find toured To recognize the province’s It’s all packed into one gold than a non-Aboriginal wife. 150th anniversary as a modern motherlode. Some of the history Barkerville and The two “brides’ ships” sent from political state, former Lieuten- nuggets uncovered include a Victoria in the England in 1862-63 did little to ant Governor Iona Campagnolo, photo of Nam Sing, the first Chi- early 1870s, his adjust the gender imbalance. Jean herself a history enthusiast, has nese miner in the Cariboo, the descendants settled Barman’s contributions include a provided the foreword for their peacemaking Chief Spintlum of in the Kootenays. short essay on the shortage of Eu- latest illustrated omnibus, The ropean-born women in the Trail of 1858: British Columbia’s Cariboo gold fields. Gold Rush Past, with contribu- “I never saw diggers so desir- tions from dozens of experts and ous of marrying as those of Brit- so-called ordinary citizens. ish Columbia,” commented one There were indeed strange observer. things done in the midnight Given that few miners could sun, and in the Cariboo gold afford to send money to bring rush. Even though John over an English girl or a Scotch “Cariboo” Cameron had lassie, they invariably appraised helped establish the first cem- potential Aboriginal partners in etery for Barkerville, he offered terms of White notions of beauty $12 per day and a bonus of and dress. Barman has retrieved $2,000 (approximately $33,000 some stanzas from “The Maid of today) to any man who would Lillooet,” written in 1862, to help carry his deceased wife make her point. Sophia’s coffin from Williams Her elastic bust no stays Creek to Victoria. confined, The blizzard-ridden, 36-day Her raven tresses flowed ordeal enabled Cameron to free as wind; temporarily bury his beloved in Whilst her waist, her Victoria. After amassing his for- neck and her ankles small tune at Cameronton in the Were encircled by bandlets, Cariboo, he returned to Victo- beadwrought all. ria with $300,000 worth of gold Her head as the wild deer’s, ($7.5 million today) and took erect and proud, Sophia’s body by ship, around To superior beauty never South America, to be buried in owed; her hometown of Glengarry, Like the diamond sparkling Ontario, thereby honouring her in the night, dying request. Her glistening black eyes ✫ beamed with light… Hurdy-Gurdy Girls. The Old Petticoat conjunction: Net proceeds from the sale Miss Brown and Miss Irving Douglas Trail. The arrival of the of The Trail of 1858 are being were the only two unmarried directed to the British Colum- Commodore, bringing Black non-Aboriginal women of residents from California. The New Westminster in 1868. bia Historical Federation. Chilcotin War. Cataline, the 1-55017-424-X ETHNOGRAPHER & LINGUIST TEIT & THE TAHLTAN

Recording Their History: James Teit Canada in 1911. and the Tahltan by Judy Thompson (D&M $55) Teit named more than sev- enty Tahltan adults (about one-third of the population at nown primarily as an eth- that time) and managed to nographer and linguist K amass 191 artifacts, 196 song among the Nlaka’pamux and recordings, 167 photographs other Interior Salish peoples, and 130 mythological tales. Scottish-born James Teit also This enduring legacy for twice conducted research in the appreciation of the Tahltan the Cassiar district of northern culture is the subject for Judy British Columbia, for seven Thompson’s Recording Their weeks in 1912 and for twelve- History: James Teit and the and-a-half weeks in 1915, un- Tahltan, from the annals of the dertaking fieldwork among the Teit captioned this Canadian Museum of Civiliza- As shown in this above photo, taken by Marius Barbeau, of Tahltan people at the instiga- photo: “Matilda Quok tion where she has been Cura- Frank Bolton (Tralahaet) and Sarah Wilson recording a Nisga’a tion of Edward Sapir who had or Reid, tci tca, tor of Western Subarctic invited him to join the staff of song along the Nass River in 1927, ethnologists such as Barbeau ‘berries’, aged abt 40. Ethnology since 1990. the new Anthropology Division and James Teit made wax cylinder recordings. Teit used a device Raven phratry. Tlapan clan.” of the Geological Survey of 978-1-55365-232-8 similar to Barbeau’s hand-cranked Edison Fireside Phonograph.

27 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 reviews FICTION S HORTIES

Spook Country by William Gibson MORE (Penguin $32.50)

William Gibson’s follow-up to his last novel Pattern Recognition (2003) Crusty attorney Beauchamp’s foot- is Spook Country, which takes place in makes another steps. Chance plays a the present day and primarily involves big part in this novel, a journalist, a junkie and a trouble- comeback and this reviewer shooter for manufacturers of military navigation equipment. 9780399154300 BY JAMES TYLER IRVINE KILL hopes to read more sto- Kill All The Judges by William Deverell ries about him again. Conceit by Mary Novik (M&S $34.99) FROM BILL Arthur remains (Doubleday $29.95) crusty but compassion- aving won the 2006 ate. Like many of us, Mary Novik’s first published novel Conceit is about Pegge Donne, the Arthur Ellis Award for he does not know how daughter of the poet John Donne, who his novel April Fool, to say “No” and fre- H audaciously rebels against her father’s William Deverell has again quently wishes he plans for her arranged marriage. The brought his lawyer protagonist had. He would rather novel’s backdrop is London in the 17th Arthur Beauchamp out of re- be relaxing, fishing, century. 978-0-385-66205-5 tirement for Kill All The Judges, spending time with his The Book of Beasts by Bernice Friesen a title that harkens back to grandson or reading (Coteau $21) Deverell’s Kill All The Lawyers, from Virgil’s Aeneid. Is published in 2001. he really William The Book of Beasts by Bernice Deverell’s 15th book opens Deverell in disguise? Friesen of Hornby Island is the com- ing of age story of Seamus (James) with a deranged court clerk who The question is part of Wilberforce Young, a half-English and fires a pistol at a presiding judge the appeal for this se- half-Irish boy who is taken to his moth- but the intended bullet is taken ries. er’s Irish village in 1965 after her moth- in the heart by a police officer ✫ er’s lengthy alienation from his family. who heroically jumps in its way. Figuring promi- Recently Seamus’ sister was killed in a This incident is creative non- nently in the story is car accident and his mother soon de- fiction, a story within the novel, the intersection of cides to leave her husband. At his written by one of its main char- Main and Keefer in grandmother’s bidding, James pursues acters. As the title suggests, Vancouver’s the priesthood only to undergo a loss there are several judges who Chinatown and a posh of faith. 978-1-55050-387-1 meet their demise in the story. condominium in what One succumbs to food poison- appears to be False ing from eating a portion of William Creek. Glimpses of tainted duck a l’orange, an- Deverell Gastown, Maple Leaf other vanishes off a wharf, and Square and Garibaldi a third’s curiosity mysteriously criminating evidence in his as if they were old acquaintances Island, where much of the novel ends his life. grandson’s possessions. Other or new friends. Beauchamp fans occurs (or is it really North Arthur Beauchamp is asked hot evidence is found in the lo- will remember lawyer Brian Pender Island where Deverell to step into the main trial in the cal community centre. Pomeroy, Margaret Blake (the makes his home?) also form part novel at the last moment (after ✫ love of Arthur’s life), crabby cen- of the landscape of the novel. much resistance on his part) to The novel has its tense mo- tenarian Winnie Gillicuddy and Kill All the Judges provides a act for the accused in the mur- ments, too, particularly during Nelson Forbish, the ever-prying- delightful, witty and satisfying der case of a judge who may have the trial of the accused. A near- for-details editor of The Bleat, to read. And the culprit…well sorry, Bernice Friesen suspicious ties to the federal sighted retired theatre diva is name just a few. that’s a secret that must be kept. government in Ottawa. asked to identify a suspect from Margaret has moved from sav- ✫ The Silent Raga by Ameen Merchant (D&M $32.95) In typical Deverell fashion the witness box. She is not able ing eagles to wanting to stretch Deverell was born in Regina there is plenty of humour that to see past the end of her nose her political aspirations nation- in 1937 and by 1964 he was The Silent Raga, the first novel from threads its way through this and must make her way slowly wide. Poor Brian Pomeroy has practicing law in British Colum- Bombay-born Ameen Merchant is novel. Felicity, who desperately around the silent room. Every become tired of his profession bia and continues to do so. The about a Brahmin musical prodigy who wants to be a poet, speaks in character who has raised suspi- and the trials of his everyday life television series Street Legal flees an arranged marriage to be with nearly perfect verse tones. “Just cions throughout the novel is sit- and sets off on a different path. which ran for eight seasons on a Muslim Bollywood star. Merchant now like a greeting card!” ting in the courtroom following Wentworth Chance, who CBC-TV was co-created by lives in Vancouver. 1-55365-309-2 Beauchamp says. or avoiding her gaze. works with Arthur, is a new char- Deverell, who also wrote its pi- Radiance by Shaena Lambert Some butter ends up on the Many of the memorable char- acter to Beauchamp mysteries— lot episode. 0-7710-2721-4 (Random House $19.95) fly of a man’s pants as result of a acters that joined Beauchamp in young, green and keen. He little under the table accident, April Fool return here and adores the legal profession James Tyler Irvine is a bookseller Shaena Lambert’s first novel Radi- and poor Arthur discovers in- Deverell presents his characters and aspires to follow in in Vancouver. ance concerns the relationship be- tween an 18-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast, Keiko Kitigawa, who is brought to the United COUPLAND‘S BOX STORE BLUES States in 1952 for charitable reconstructive surgery, and her subur- The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland Incidental Music by Carol Matthews (Oolican $18.95) ban hostess, Daisy Lawrence, who has (Random House $32) been assigned the task to pry the girl’s arol Matthews’ debut collection of fiction, traumatic story from her to serve the ometimes you just can’t improve Incidental Music, consists of seven linked stor- propaganda needs of the committee upon the hype. The jacket for Doug- ies about several couples, mainly Tannis and that has sponsored her visit. With McCarthyism on the rise and experi- ’s new novel about Cher husband Stephen. Before she wed, Tannis’s fa- las Coupland S ments to develop the hydrogen bomb the angst-ridden lives of employees in a ther had told her “There has to be give and take in a underway in the U.S., the complex inti- Staples outlet, The Gum Thief (Random marriage. You’ll find the lasting value of a marriage macy that arises between the “Hiro- House $32), offers an excerpt that neatly appears not at the beginning but later, towards the shima maiden” and her host mother captures the interplay between pathos end. It is a journey, not a destination.” The couple has its own frission born of whispered and humour in Coupland’s ongoing cri- go on to cope with aging and abandonment, buoyed confessions and wrenching betrayals. tiques of modern North American society. by the consolations of maturity and a lasting union. 978-0-769-31150-8 Once again, Coupland and his charac- Music also connects the lives of Matthews’ charac- ters have melded into one narrative voice: ters. “I work in a Staples. I’m in charge of re- Born in Vancouver, Carol Matthews was an instruc- stocking aisles 2-North and 2-South: Sheet tor and dean at Malaspina University-College, where Protectors, Indexes & Dividers, Notebooks, Douglas Coupland she has continued as an Honorary Research Associ- Post-it Products, Paper Pads, Specialty Pa- ate. Her first book, The First Three Years of a Grand- pers and ‘Social Stationery.’ Do I hate this dem. Just because you’ve been born and mother’s Life (Ryerson, 2006), is a collection of her job? Are you nuts? Of course I hate it. How made it through high school doesn’t mean quarterly columns from Relational Child and Youth could you not hate it? Everyone who works society still can’t abort you. Wake up. Let Care Practice, written from her perspective as a with me is either already damaged or else me try to say something positive here. For grandmother, and self-illustrated. She lives on Pro- they’re embryos waiting to be damaged, balance. Staples allows me to wear black tection Island, along with her husband, Mike, and Shaena Lambert fresh out of school and slow as a 1999 mo- lipstick to work.—Bethany” 978-0-307-35628-4 Victor, their “poet dog.” 978-088982-234-4

29 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 reviews FICTION

the very house Robert and Jeremy had sanctioned drug experiment in grown up in. Toronto in 1972. Later the author’s intrusive- The letters from Birdie, some ness largely disappears, espe- of which Jeremy finds in the fam- THUMPING JACKS cially once the story ricochets to ily home, are 30 years old. Ar- the most overtly deviant son, ticulate, funny and insightful, Chris F. Needham plays Lucy with the truth to unravel congenital violence Jonathan. But only about half of Birdie’s writing pulls us in right this novel is about this scary fam- from the start and fortifies us for BY CHERIE THIESSEN that Robert, who is an army re- tic choice of intruding into the ily of four. the frequent ‘trips’ back and Falling from Heights by Chris F. Needham servist, has been killed in a jump story and because of his use of ✫ forth to the Jacks brothers. We (Now or Never Publishing $21.95) while on a weekend training convoluted and lengthy para- Right from the beginning, want to know who Birdie is, and mission. graph-long sentences. Here’s an interspersed with the Jacks fam- what she has got to do with the ou don’t want to mess The father tells him Robert’s example: ily, we have another intriguing chaos and carnage in the lives with the three Jacks boys, parachute must have become Together Jeremy and his father storyline: A mysterious but fasci- of the Jacks twins. YJonathan, Robert and entangled with that of a fellow tried to get limping Robert into his nating young woman, Birdie, is Needham’s combination of Jeremy. In Falling from Heights, jumper, one Corporal Sidhu, now vacant, incessantly leaky condo writing letters and diary entries “Lucy’s” modern communica- none of them can sustain last- but when Jeremy returns and —as mentioned, Robert’s wife had from a voluntary “prison,” part tion method of blogging with ing relationships. accompanies his ailing father to taken a recent leave of absence from of a well-paid controlled experi- the somewhat passé action of let- Jonathan, the elder by six- the airport, expecting to pick their relationship, taking with her ment on the effects of mari- ter writing by Birdie makes for teen years, is a sexual predator. up a very small coffin, his their three year-old daughter—but juana usage, a trial that took a welcome juxtaposition. Jailed earlier for his attacks on brother limps off the plane. with his various minor injuries, to- place in the early 1970s. Plots can sometimes benefit young girls, he has done his time Turns out that Robert has mi- gether with everything else presently It’s this half of Falling from from being convoluted, as long and now lives in a heritage home raculously sustained only minor falling apart in his life, they thought Heights that was evidently in- as the author leaves us crumbs in a respectable Langley com- injuries, as Sidhu cushioned his better of it and decided to install him spired by real letters and events to find our way out of the maze, munity; closely monitored 24/7 fall. in his old room at his father’s house, that occurred at a government- but there’s a great deal about by four full-time employees. Unlike Sukhvinder, Robert Falling from Heights that is per- Robert has left his second has survived his fall from heights. plexing. Why has Needham wife, and a three-year old Both younger brothers, now gone to so much trouble to cari- daughter he has no interest in, close to 30, return to the fam- cature Jeremy’s drinking buddy, in favour of impregnating one ily home with their Dad, a a well-known alcoholic actor of his high school students, home that is constantly los- who played in a long-running tel- whom he subsequently may have ing ground to a rapacious evision series? And why is he in- assisted off the Knight Street ravine. There has never cluding real events and people Bridge. The partying student been a mother in the pic- from Greenpeace? Sukhvinder, and her unborn ture. Jon Sr. has told his And what about those envi- child, unsurprisingly didn’t sur- boys she died while on a ronmental conflicts he intro- vive the plunge—or fall. honeymoon with her sec- duces? Whoever would have Although he doesn’t drink, ond husband. guessed that Jon Jacks, the one Robert loves to beat the hell out The present-day story time alcoholic and aimless father of guys in bars, he loves to watch of the Jacks family is we meet at the beginning, his twin brother, Jeremy, get posted as blog entries would also have been involved plastered, and he doesn’t say no on the Internet by in Greenpeace and environ- to a good toke. Jeremy, the someone with the pen mental activism? drunk, is the best of the three, name of Lucy. Given And, of course, who really is although he’s a failure at work, that the only Lucy we the mother of these twins and relationships and life. meet in the story is a cat where the heck is she? Both university-educated at the eldest son’s Flashes of a Lexus, a missing brothers, Robert and Jeremy, are guarded residence, we girl, and her no-good boyfriend, “temporarily” doing menial jobs are intrigued to learn also keep flicking throughout in a smelly Delta fish feed plant. more. the novel, piquing our curiosity Unfortunately, Robert can no ✫ and further knitting together longer teach school, not because The twins and their rela- this dark story. of Sukhvinder—nobody knows tionship feel very credible, Symbolism is everywhere, about that yet—but because he and the plot is engaging, Chris F. from the ravine’s encroachment punched out the principal in so with all of this ex- Needham: on the family yard, to the crack- front of his students. One won- citement go- Delving into ing cement in the fishpond, to ders why this pugilistic charmer ing on, you violence in the the unfinished treehouse for would have ever chosen teach- would think it suburbs of Robert’s daughter. Possibly ing children in the first place. would be easy Vancouver Needham began writing as a Jeremy has reluctantly re- to get yanked poet before he wrote An Inverted turned to Vancouver from east- quickly into Sort of Prayer, his other novel, ern Canada where he has had this novel. In about an ex-hockey enforcer, one largely unread, misogynist fact, it’s a that was published shortly before book published. His return is struggle at this one. 978-0-9739558-1-1 prompted by a phone call from first, mostly be- his father, with whom he has had cause of the Cherie Thiessen regularly reviews a dicey relationship, telling him author’s stylis- fiction from Pender Island.

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31 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 reviews KIDLIT SHORT LIST A DANISH IN WARTIME AGES 8+ Dangerous Crossings by Antonia Chocolate éclairs, the Resistance & Banyard (Annick $9.95) fleeing the Nazis in 1943 Born in South Africa, Antonia Banyard emigrated from Zambia when AGES 8 TO 10 which addressed the malignant she was four. She grew up mainly in Honey Cake by Joan Betty Stuchner legacy of Hitler’s madness Nelson and now lives in Vancouver. (Tradewind $16.95) through a gay hairdresser and Dangerous Crossings is her collection of ten true stories of harrowing journeys avid Nathan lives above his female apprentice and Sitting and escapes from an 18th century up- the family bakery, right Practice which delved into the per-class Peruvian woman who gets Dnext door to his best sexual life of a wheelchair- stranded on the Amazon River to a teen- friend Elsa and her family’s toy bound woman with spinal cord ager who crosses war-torn Germany in store. David’s Papa still does the injury, has written her first book search of his family. 978-1554510863 best baking in the city and Mama for young children. In six short AGES 10+ is making her special honey cake tales I, Bruno relates the adven- Rebel’s Tag by In K.L. Denman for Rosh Hashanah to welcome tures of Adderson’s son Patrick, (Orca $9.95) the Jewish New Year but very lit- the “boy inspiration.” Energetic tle is sweet or rosy in Copenha- illustrations by Helen Flook re- In K.L. Denman’s Rebel’s Tag, the story revolves around Sam, an angry youth gen in 1943. Three years veal a stalwart de- who expresses his feelings by spray paint- earlier, just before Passo- fender of dragons- ing the sign of Aquarius, his tag, while ver, the Nazis had in- disguised-as-fire-hy- climbing on rooftops. Sam is disturbed by vaded Denmark. drants, the Queen the disappearance of his grandfather Now the grownups in all his white-glove soon after Sam’s father is buried. When are always anxious and se- and red-velvet-cape this grandfather starts writing to Sam, and cretive, and even David’s glory and a reluc- leads him on a frustrating scavenger older sister Rachel is eva- tant primary-grade Cynthia Nugent illustration from Joan Betty Stuchner’s Honey Cake hunt, Sam’s distress bubbles to the sur- sive about her mysterious DONNELLY printer who cleverly face and he is nabbed for spray paint- LOUISE comings and goings. comes up with a ing. Sam must make the leap from re- Then David is asked to make a one-letter moniker for himself. bellion to forgiveness. 978-1-55143-740-8 delivery of chocolate éclairs—a 978-1-55143-501-5 AGES 9-12 rare treat with cream and butter AGES 12+ Becca at Sea by Deidre Baker In Pain & Wastings by Carrie Mac (Groundwood $18.95) so scarce—and learns his sister is (Orca $9.95) in the Resistance, blowing up Children’s book reviewer Deidre buildings and railway tracks. Ru- n Pain & Wastings, Carrie Baker, a teacher of English at University mours are circulating. Bad things Mac, a paramedic who’s of Toronto, has used her summers at are happening all over occupied worked Vancouver’s darker Hornby Island as the basis for Becca at I Europe. People are disappear- side, continues the trademark Sea (Groundwood $18.95), a YA novel ing. Especially Jews. Every day grit and grind of Charmed, Crush, about a girl named Becca who visits her grandmother’s rustic cabin on the Gulf King Christian X defiantly rides and The Beckoners. In this latest Island during her mother’s pregnancy his horse through Copenhagen’s book for reluctant teen-readers and comes to enjoy her outdoor ad- streets but as Rachel says, “Things fifteen-year-old Ethan is ventures. Baker is also the co-author of happen that even kings can’t stunned to discover the ambu- A Guide to Canadian Children’s Books stop.” lance station is right in the mid- with Ken Settington. 978-0-88899-737-1 Yet Mama still bakes the dle of the Downtown Eastside. honey cake and the morning be- He’d willingly agreed to the ALSO NOTED fore Rosh Hashanah David sits ride-along in the ambulance but with Papa in the synagogue. suddenly the alternative to go- Soon, though, Rabbi Melchior ing to court for breaking into an makes a terrifying announce- amusement park isn’t looking so ment. “The Nazis plan to round cushy. It’s not the area’s notori- up Denmark’s Jews tonight. We ety for “drugs and prostitutes must go home and prepare for and poverty and violence” that’s our escape.” David’s bundled in got him spooked. It’s that Main layers of clothing and Mama and Hastings, or Pain and snatches up her cake—she’s not Wastings as it’s more accurately about to leave it behind for the called, is only a few blocks away. Nazis—and the Nathan family He doesn’t want to remember hurries to the train station. If what happened there, all those ------they head to the coast, if they years ago, but as the twelve-hour Helen Flook Diane Tullson, Lockdown escape detection on a fishing shifts drag on and Holly, the illustration from (Orca $9.95) 978-1-55143-676-0 boat, if they make it to Sweden, paramedic, lets on she knew his I, Bruno by ------they might just be safe. If… mother, the demons descend. Caroline Adderson Robin Stevenson, Dead in the Water Inspired by a friend’s story, 978-1-55143-904-4 (Orca $9.95) 978-1-55143-962-4 Honey Cake is the fourth chil- AGES 4 TO 8 ------dren’s book for Vancouver story- Mush and the Big Blue Flower Polly Horvath, The Corps of the by Laurie Payne (Oolichan $21.95) Bare-Boned Plane (Groundwood $9.95) teller and librarian’s assistant 978-0-88899-851-4 Joan Betty Stuchner. Stuchner, orn and raised in Eng------who also wrote The Kugel Valley land, Laurie Payne set- Julie White, High Fences Klezmer Band and teaches part tled in the Shuswap Val- (Sono Nis $9.95) 978-1-55039-063-3 B time at a Jewish school, provides ley in the 1960s. A widely exhib------a recipe for the spicy, coffee-fla- ited artist, sculptor and painter, Duane Lawrence, Sammy Squirrel & Rodney Raccoon (Granville Island voured honey cake and an he has writ- $12.95 ) 978-1-894694-54-4 afterword relating an intriguing ten his first ------history of the Danish Jews. children’s Nan Gregory, Pink (Groundwood Artist Cynthia Nugent, who book, Mush $17.95) 978-0-88899-781-4 taught herself to paint and draw and the Big ------from library books, traveled to Blue Flower, Sylvia Olsen & Ron Martin, Which Way Should I Go? (Sono Nis Copenhagen to research and fla- about a boy $19.95) 978-1-55039-161-9 vour her illustrations. Visiting who is per------the city, she says, “made history suaded he Pam Adams, From Blossom to come alive.” 978-1-896580-371 Laurie Payne has lost his Blondie (Self-published $15.75) 978-0- voice. This AGES 4 TO 8 9684415-6-5 allegorical fantasy, illustrated by ------I, Bruno by Caroline Adderson Ruth Campbell, also features a Penny Draper, Peril at Pier Nine (Orca $6.95) (Coteau $8.95) 978-1-55050-376-0 magic flying teapot that trans------aroline Adderson, ports him as he searches for his Iain Lawrence, Gemini Summer known for her much- missing voice. 978-088982-242-5 (Random House $21) 978-0385-73089-1 C lauded adult fiction in- cluding A History of Forgetting Louise Donnelly writes from Vernon. Cover art for Carrie Mac’s Pain & Wastings

32 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 reviews INDIES REX & NAPOLEON IT SHOULD BE Curious Little World: A Self-Imposed Exile on St. Helena Island by Rex Bartlett (Gabriola Island: Toppermost Books $21.95)

CHEWASSEN ex Bartlett’s Curious Little World: A ongoing hatreds within Self-Imposed Exile on St. Helena Is- Chewassen, Tsawwassen or Chiltinm: land mainly recounts how he and The Land Facing the Sea by Gwen the so-called Holy R Szychter ( tel:604-946-4890; $35 ) his partner Cynthia Barefoot went to live Land—with a lively on the tiny island where Napoleon died, primer on how the halfway between Africa and South aving self-published world has gone to hell America. They bought an abandoned two books on Ladner, in a handbasket in the house sight unseen, lacking plumbing, H Gwen Szychter is back Middle East. About electricity and telephone. with Chewassen, Tsawwassen or halfway through his vi- As an ex-musician, Bartlett’s self-dep- Chiltinm: The Land Facing the Sea, tuperative but compel- recating charm is as appealing as the an illustrated guide to buildings ling barrage of exotic locale of his memoir. He recalls and early settlers of Tsawwassen, pro-Palestinian histori- being Neil Young’s paperboy in Win- excluding Point Roberts. cal analysis—in which nipeg and travel- Szychter explains her odd he pummels the al- choice of title: “I would have ling to buy guitar leged collusion be- Clearing strings in Hibbing, much preferred to be using the tween the Bush/ land in West Minnesota, Bob older and more pleasing Cheney “oilochracy” Vancouver, Dylan’s birthplace, ‘Chewassen’ to refer to this area. and the state of Israel— 1915 hoping the strings However, it has been known ver- Felton sets out to de- would bring them hile serving on the West Vancouver Heritage Advisory Committee, Elspeth bally and popularly since 1946 bunk the “demonized” Napoleon luck in their new Bradbury has produced a coffee table book on the forestry of that area as by the spelling ‘Tsawwassen,’ image of Osama bin band. a fundraiser for the Lighthouse Park Preservation Society, West Vancouver: with no standard pronunciation, Laden. For that reason W “But just outside of Hibbing, we A View Through the Trees (District of West Vancouver $40). The collaborative rounded a curve in the highway and ap- a situation that was dumped on alone, some Jews, and effort, that includes extensive historical information, was edited by Valerie Frith. proached a huge banner strung across us by a nameless, faceless bu- many non-Jews, will pre- reaucrat at the Geographic Bradbury credits the help of publishing insiders Don and Barbara Atkins, Jim the road. The sign didn’t say, ‘Welcome fer to dismiss Felton’s to Hibbing, Bob Dylan’s Hometown’ like Board of Canada, to be applied Douglas, Rob Sanders, Mark Stanton, historian Doreen Armitage, project prolonged screed it should. Instead it said, ‘Welcome to coordinator Hugh Johnston and dozens of others. 978-0-9784147-0-2 to ‘the beach near Point as hate literature, Hibbing, World’s Largest Open Pit Iron Roberts.’ I have, therefore, as unforgivable anti- Mine.’ I knew right then that I had been opted for the name and spell- Semitism. But it should be noted 136,000-ton tanker Condoleeza wrong. The sign was a sign. Well, obvi- ing of modern usage, even that Felton’s disdain for so-called Rice? Upon her ascension to the A ROUBLE FOR ously the sign was a sign. Anyone could though I like it not at all. The mainstream media is equally in- White House, Chevron changed see that the sign was a sign, but I could HIS THOUGHTS see that the sign was an omen. final variation, Chiltinm, is what tense. The vast sweep of Felton’s the name to the less noticeable the Corboulds perceived as the Looking Through Glasnost by Gil Parker “The silver strings would not bring us overview is not dissimilar to (Victoria: Aware Publishing $21.95) Altair Voyager. fame. They would hold no magic. I stared Indian name for the area. For Naomi Klein’s one-size-fits-all Felton traces how some your own personal enjoyment, fter 1991, when the com- at the vast obscene open pit iron mine analytic approach to debunking Christians in the U.S. have come and realized that my piercing Joan-of- I’d like you to know that the munist hierarchy of 74 neo-liberalism and its collusion to view Israel’s ascendancy as the Arc-sy vision had been nothing more than working title of this book was years collapsed throwing with the World Bank. If you can illumination of biblical proph- A a post-Klik hallucination. Chastened and ‘Tsawwassen: From Picnics to scrape together enough facts to ecy—God’s will in action—to the Soviet Union into turmoil, humiliated, we returned to the Winnie- Potatoes to Palm Trees.’ I am not suit your argument, you the continuing detri- the market economy failed to The-Pooh Capital of the World.” sure why I chose to go with a can hold the courtroom ment of Palestinians. materialize and western money 978-0-978-3927-0-3 [P.O Box 319 Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0] more formal title in the end, but of public opinion spell- Felton writes for disappeared into the hands of I certainly acknowledge that I’ve bound with your zeal. To the Arabic/English the oligarchs. The expectations chosen to convey a Euro-Cana- give both sides of an ar- Canadian Arab News. of the people were dashed, their ALSO RECEIVED dian view of the land.” gument, on the other A falling-out with his personal savings erased by suc- , Cry of the Phoenix 978-0-9680951-4-0 hand, runs the risk of Arizona-based book cessive devaluations of the rou- Colleen O’Connor (Cat’s Eye Enterprises $19.95) being dismissed as wishy- publisher has re- ble. Gil Parker’s Looking Through 978-0-9783988-0-4 washy. sulted in him selling ------FREE REIN TO Glasnost describes a dozen per- Felton, an inveterate his own book directly Terry Julian, The Seduction of Surveys FREE SPEECH sonal visits by the former engi- letter-to-the-editor guy, Greg Felton from his home. In Canada’s Federal Elections (Signature The Host and the Parasite: How Israel’s does dish out a host of “Real power does neer and mountain climber, Publishing $14.95) 978-1-4251355-4-6 Fifth Column Consumed America by intriguing details that never not lie with the White House or prompted by a Rotary Club ‘sis------Greg Felton (Dandelion/The Author $40) Bruce Batchelor, Book Marketing De- seem to get aired on CBS or Congress,” he pronounces, “it ter-city’ initiative in 1988. Over a 15-year period, Parker ex- mystified (Agio $14.95)978-1-897435-00-7 edicated to the World CNN and all those other news lies with the Jewish, Christian ------plored Georgia, Lithuania, Wide Web, “the last outlets that run the gamut of and Straussian pressure groups Eleanor Millard, Journeys Outside and hope for a free press,” opinion from A to B. For in- that tell the president and Con- Uzbekistan, and Russia east to In (Self-published $24.95) 0-9782817-0-5 D west, befriended many Soviet ------Greg Felton’s The Host and the stance, Felton points out that gress what to do.” Parasite: How Israel’s Fifth Column Condoleeza Rice, Bush’s Secre- It’s up to each reader to de- citizens, learned Russian and Anne Brevig, Years on the 7 Seas (Seven Seas Press, $36.95) 0973758201 tary of State, was a director of came to understand the crum- Consumed America is ostensibly an cide whether or not Felton’s fili------attempt to provide the impar- Chevron from 1991 to 2001. So buster of fury is useful bling Communist model and the faltering democracy that re- Glen Lovett, The Adventures of Jasper: tial reader—folks who remain who knew that Chevron, as a commentary or a missile from a Lost in Skookum Valley (Lovett Pictures placed it. perplexed by petropolitics and parting gesture, named a crackpot. 978-1-893302-97-6 978-0-9736906-1-3 $18.95) 978-0-9783116-1-2 $1,500 Creative Non-Fiction new & established writers Contest We are Three winners will each receive $500 plus payment for publication in Event 37/3. Other manuscripts may be published. elebrating Final Judge: Timothy Taylor is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. He is a colum- The Globe and Mail C nist with and the recipient of three National Magazine Awards. our Writers are invited to submit manuscripts exploring the creative non-fiction form. Back issues of Event th with previous winning entries and judges’ comments are available for $7.35 (inc. GST and postage). 10 Note: Previously published material cannot be considered. Maximum entry length is 5000 words, typed, double-spaced. Include a separate cover sheet with the writer’s name, address, nniversary phone number / email, and the title(s) of the story (stories) enclosed. Enclose a SASE (Canadian A postage / IRCs / US$1). Douglas College employees are not eligible to enter. GALIANO Open year-round with over 25,000 titles Entry Fee: Each entry must be accompanied by a $29.95 entry fee (includes GST and a one-year subscription or extension; make cheque or international money order payable to Event). American ISLA ND plus a great selection of Canadian authors, and overseas entrants please pay in US dollars. art supplies and gifts. Deadline for Entries: Postmarked by April 15, 2008. Join us for readings and book launches. P.O. Box 2503, New Westminster, BC Canada V3L 5B2 Phone: (604) 527-5293 Fax: (604) 527-5095 76 Madrona Drive Galiano Island BC V0N 1P0 Email: [email protected] 250 539-3340 [email protected] Visit our website at http://event.douglas.bc.ca

33 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 Has media concentration gone too far? Marc Edge’s hard-hitting LETTERS critique of Canada’s dominant media conglomerate asks the questions they don’t want you to think about. As Randy Fred noted at your recent THE PERFECT BOOK Reckoning 07 conference, Malaspina Asper Nation faculty assisted with the creation of We visited family in Victoria for the Theytus Books, the first aboriginal press Canada’s Most Dangerous Christmas holidays. I picked up the Win- in Canada. Malaspina has presented Media Company ter edition of your publication on the honorary doctorates to Jack Hodgins ferry from Vancouver. The article about and Carol Shields, and administers the Find it here Derek Evans, and the excerpt from his Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Chair of Duthie Books, West 4th Av. • People’s Co-op Bookstore book, were so compelling that I Poetry, which in recent years has 32 Books, North Vancouver • Magpie Books & Mags purchased Dispatches from the brought BC poets Patricia Blackberry Books • Munro’s Books, Victoria Global Village at Munro’s in Vic- Young, Susan Musgrave, Gary Tanners Books • Sorensen Books • Abraxas Books toria on Christmas eve and read Geddes, Patrick Lane, Robert Chapters • Indigo Books + Music it from cover to cover that after- Bringhurst and Tom Wayman to chapters.indigo.ca • amazon.com noon. It was the perfect book for our community, among others. the season, as Evans writes elo- Each year, at the launch of Published by New Star Books quently about the goals we es- Portal, our annual literary maga- pouse, but rarely achieve, even Derek Evans zine, we welcome a guest reader; in a time when we proclaim these have included Christian peace and goodwill to others. By the way, Bök, Wayde Compton, Sheri-d Wilson, I obtained the last copy that Munro’s and bill bissett. And then, of course, had in stock, so I hope the publisher re- there’s the fact that Malaspina currently plenishes the supply for 2008. has 15 BC writers on its staff, delivering Philip E. Carr one of the most comprehensive, four- Calgary, AB year undergraduate creative writing pro- grams in Canada. In addition to the work they do with the most important WHITEHORSE CALLING writers we support — our students — I always read your newspaper when- Malaspina’s Creative Writing and Jour- ever I am on the ferries going to visit my nalism faculty supervise the Poets on grandchildren. I enjoy it so much that I Campus reading series in Nanaimo, the know my friend Carol would like a gift Cowichan Campus Reading Series in subscription. We are both avid readers Duncan, the New Waves Festival of new and book buyers but living in plays, the Institute for Coastal Research Whitehorse, Yukon, so we don’t have chapbook series, and Incline, an online many bookstores to choose from. A Coles magazine written by our journalism stu- has opened in the city and I fear it is dents, among other ongoing projects. undermining the only independent I’d like to invite Anne Cameron to bookseller in town. Might I suggest you attend the launch of the 2008 edition approach Mac’s Fireweed Books on of Portal on April 8, at which Vancou- Main Street about carrying the paper? I ver poet and MC Baba Brinkman will think making your paper available to perform his Rap Canterbury Tales. I Short stories readers in Whitehorse would be good expect that event alone might give her for authors and for sales at Mac’s Fire- reason to reconsider her remarks. wood Books. Keep up the good work. Frank Moher Spence Hill Chair, Department of Creative A Heart in Port Whitehorse Writing and Journalism, Malaspina University-College by Emily Givner MALASPINA REPLIES As an admirer of Anne Cameron, I IT’S A KEEPER “There is a was sorry to see in your last issue that I loved your editorial about the name wonderful shock — she had somehow got the idea that “British Columbia” so much that I am Malaspina University-College is any- compelled to fire off a response! a real charge in these stories.” thing other than a major supporter of I think we should keep the name. — ALICE MUNRO writers and writing in British Columbia. Like British Columbia my name also has Even before the creation of the Depart- dubious connotations. My late father Available from ment of Creative Writing and Journal- was a career criminal from Alabama who ism in 1990, Malaspina regularly hosted went under several aliases, one of them Thistledown Press readings by myriad writers, including being Jay Anthony Christopher. ISBN 978-1-897235-32-4 • $16.95 Earle Birney, Michael Ondaatje, bp This was the name he used when I nichol, Jack Hodgins, Gary Geddes, was born; I inherited it by default. This Alice Munro, and, yes, Anne Cameron. was not always a good thing.

IN BETTER BOOKSTORES Dirtbags ACROSS THE a novel by Teresa McWhirter NATION!

Dirtbags is a novel about reckoning—with one’s past, one’s choices, and one’s expectations for the future. This novel
        deals with the bonds             between women, the cycle of poverty, self-  !"#$#%%&'(% “Dirtbags is an easy )'($#* '+(   ,  destruction, loss of and addictive read . . . family, the outlaw honest dialogue and code, and the fragile grungy dream-like beauty of the human details”
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34 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008

He went through 31 arrests and Hinde’s chaplain, Francis Fletcher, that STILL about nine marriages before dying in an Drake chose the name New Albion for Indiana prison. My mother’s family fre- two reasons: “the one in respect of the COUNTING quently reminded me that I was “just like white bancks and cliffs which lie towards him,” and refused to call me by my first the sea; the other, that it might have some name, Jay, opting instead for my middle affinity even in name also with or owne THE RINGS name Nathaniel. “It’s just like naming country, which was sometimes so called.” your kid after Clifford Olson,” said one Drake’s men nailed a brass plate onto An Autobiography aunt. a wooden post with an inscription men- by W.G. “Gerry” Burch I never knew him, he was in prison tioning New Albion incised thereon and before I was born. I only met him once a round hole with an English sixpence when I was 21. When I was a teenager I showing through from the other side, resented any connection to him and al- to which it was soldered. (Albion, the most went through a legal eponymous name of a gi- name change. ant in ancient British my- At the age of 26 I don’t thology, comes from the feel any closer to my father Latin albus, meaning This biography will amuse, educate, enlighten and even mildly but I do feel a deep affin- white.) shock you. ity with the name he chose Following two recent for himself. The name books—the second an Still Counting the Rings provides a history of the growth of Christopher is no longer augmentation of the the forest industry in BC and views the development of forest something that I inherited first—by Sam Bawlf con- policies through the eyes of one of Canada’s most recognized from him. It’s the name on cerning Drake’s “secret my diplomas and degree. voyage,” I am one of those foresters. It’s my byline as a journal- who choose to believe that ist. It’s a name I’ve made New Albion was, in all Gerry’s recollections, antidotes, and descriptions of early my own. It’s an insepara- probability, hereabouts. cruising in the late 1940’s is a must read and his opinions on ble part of my identity that The Drake-Hondius map some notable characters in the industry are valuable reading. I’m not about to change. Sir Francis Drake of New Albion, in my British Columbia is also opinion, matches Bound- a part of my identity. I’m a fifth-genera- ary Bay better than anywhere else along tion British Columbian on my mother’s the Northwest Coast, and (to cite a less side. We’ve had this name for 150 years well-known piece of evidence that has and it’s known around the world. When recently come my way) since the fort “at Special Price: $29.95 (plus $9.00 shipping) I travel abroad nearly everyone I encoun- the foot of a hill” which Fletcher avers Available through Bjork Publishing ter has either been to British Columbia Drake and his men built upon their ar- To order e-mail: [email protected] or has a family member who has. They rival would have to have been near fresh- associate the name “British Columbia” water, it was probably in the region of with the people, land and history we what is now Crescent Beach at the choose to present. mouth of the Nicomekl River. Nathaniel Christopher The site might have impinged on Burnaby native fishing rights, and nearby hilly RECENT TITLES FROM Ocean Park has a street named Indian canada’s new independent publisher Fort Road to commemorate the location NEW ALBION? of a palisaded Indian fort, perhaps a Generating discussion about renam- structural descendant of Drake’s fort, ing British Columbia is an excellent idea. and leaving ruins known to have been I happen to think that the name “Brit- there within living memory. ish Columbia,” which Queen Victoria Albion eventually became a poetical Petros Spathis chose a century-and-a-half ago, has name for England found in the works Fiction by Manolis served us well, all things considered, but of (among others) Spenser, Shakespeare A gripping story set in a country steeped and William Blake. There is an ancillary agree that it now sounds ‘veddy colonial’ in history, in an era when Greece was and old hat. Scottish legend about a giant named governed by a military tyranny. This is It’s all very well for the provincial capi- ‘Albyn’ which may go back to the Alba- an era that few outsiders knew much tal, Victoria, to have a newspaper nians, who seem to have shared with their about, but that bore down hard on those quaintly called The Colonist, but let’s re- Celtic counterparts a love of rugged who lived, loved and cared for their member that Vancouver, besides being mountains, kilts and bagpipes, if not of precious land. the only Canadian city mentioned in oatmeal. Myth tends to be timeless as James Joyce’s still futuristic Finnegan’s well as inclusive, at least this one does, Wake, is also the westernmost metropo- and in Blake’s illuminated epic poem Je- Prairie Roots lis in the Western Hemisphere, hence a rusalem, Albion symbolized the fall and Memoir by Michael Zrymiak pivotal point in the greater scheme of regeneration of mankind. things. Of course my new name suggestion, A passionate accounting of the childhood and teen years of one son of Eastern With these thoughts in mind I do if adopted, would entail other changes. European immigrants who settled and have a suggestion for a new name. We BC BookWorld would have to become broke land in Saskatchewan. This life, could do a lot worse than go back to the NA BookWorld. And ICBC would be- like so many lives of the children of the first recorded name possibly applied by come ICNA—short for “I see New Great Plains, reveals a profound love of a European to this territory (or, rather, Albion,” another way of saying, “I see family, of nature and of the prairies. its southwestern corner)—New Albion. the Promised Land.” After spending some six weeks dur- Warren Stevenson ing the summer of 1579 careening his White Rock Iliarjuk ship, the Golden Hinde (which had it- An Inuit Memoir by Dracc Dreque self undergone a name-change upon Letters or emails contact: This first-hand account of contemporary entering the Pacific) preparatory to con- BC BookWorld, tinuing on his epic voyage around the life in a small Inuit community on Baffin 3516 W. 13th Ave., world, which, unlike his predecessor Island paints a raw, painful, disturbing, hilarious, lyrical, provocative and Magellan, he was able to complete in Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 eye-opening picture that is a testimony person, master-mariner Francis Drake to the courage and sheer determination email: [email protected] bestowed the name New Albion on Pa- of its author. cific coastal territory. Exactly where Drake applied the Letters may be edited for We pay double royalties to the year’s name remains open to dispute, but we clarity & length. best-selling author. To find out more visit know from the Diary of the Golden

35 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 critical books for critical thinkers shauna paull OUTSIDE THE BOX “John Calvert debunks the claims of the private energy industry’s equivalent of snake-oil Proud Mary salesmen, while ably defending B.C.’s public How the annals of Mary Rice have been resurrected power heritage that serves us so well.” aised in the - BILL TIELEMAN, columnist and Shawnigan area political commentator LIQUID GOLD of Vancouver Is- Energy Privatization in British Columbia R John Calvert land, at Chemainus, by roughened in undercurrent available from your local independent bookstore or contact 902.857.1388 / [email protected] her very English parents leafpress.ca www.fernwoodpublishing.ca Mr. and Mrs. Richmond Beauchamp Halhed, New from Black Rose Books Beryl Mildred Cryer was

CONCISE GUIDE TO GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS born Beryl Mildred Daniel Fischlin, Martha Nandorfy Halhed in Auckland, This book is an urgently needed and sophisticated reflection on the vital nature of human rights in the 21st century. New Zealand in 1889. “In a world facing the growing challenges of globalized apartheid and pandemic poverty, human rights will determine the future...this Having arrived at book allows us to reclaim our hope in that future.” Shawnigan Lake in 1892, she —Roger Clark, Amnesty International later maintained the area re- 288 pages, 1-55164-294-8 $24.99 ceived its name from a hybrid MARVELLOUS CENTURY: Archaic Man and the word commemorating two Awakening of Reason early Anglo settlers, Shaw George Woodcock and Finnegan. She married Filled with characters, events, romance, and intrigue, here is a fasci- local businessman William nating journey through the 6th century B.C. that allows us to expe- Claude Cryer and they had rience the beauty, savagery and all-encompassing impact of a one child. Hul’q’umi’num’ storyteller Mary Rice century characterized by a cluster of events that changed irrevoca- During the Depression, at bly the way humans looked upon the universe and even upon them- the request of the managing editor of the from below the Arctic Circle in an effort selves. 256 pages, 1-55164-266-2 $24.99 Daily Colonist newspaper in Victoria, she to drive a herd of 300 reindeer over 1,500 collected Coast Salish stories from miles of frozen tundra and ice to Point Bar- OBSESSION, WITH INTENT: Violence Against Women Hul’q’umi’num’ elders, mainly her next row, Alaska. Lee Lakeman door neighbour Mary Rice from As he undergoes his own ordeal, Dalton Obsession, With Intent is an investigative report into one hundred Kuper Island, as well as Joe and recalls the heroic efforts of the three men cases of violence against women; in all cases the women tried to get Jennie Wyse, for a series of 60 arti- who tried to bring the reindeer herd to help from the system. It reviews 911 procedure, from how the emer- gency operator evaluates the call, to the police, to prosecuting attor- cles that appeared in the Sunday Maga- the crews of eight whaling ships stranded ney, to court, to sentencing. It is a harrowing account of individual zine supplement. in the ice, on the verge of starvation. women’s stories and the dangers they faced. For instance, also co-wrote an article 978-1-894974-33-2 224 pages, 1-55164-262-X $24.99 with Jennie Wyse (Tstass-Aya) for the ✍ Daily Colonist about a battle between the THE RAGING GRANNIES: Wild Hats, Cheeky Songs, Rick Antonson’s To Timbuktu and Witty Actions for a Better World Snunéymuxw of Gabriola Island and the for a Haircut (Dundurn $26.95) is an Carole Roy Lekwiltok from a century before. amusing memoir about his intrepid jour- This is the tale of the Raging Grannies: their beginning and growth, Although she was not trained as a jour- ney to Mali, via Senegal, to visit the fa- the invention of their identity, the bold potential of their activism, nalist or anthropologist, Cryer was care- bled city, and his resulting determination the values expressed in their actions and songs, and their impact on ful to keep track of the sources of the to help preserve Timbuktu’s approxi- issues, stereotypes, media, and people—bursting with adventures, narratives, enabling ethnographers who protest songs, photographs, Granny profiles, and Granny wisdom. mately 700,000 endangered ancient came afterwards to trace their origins and manuscripts. The title is derived from a better understand their meanings. favoured expression of his father when- Available at your local bookstore, or by calling 1-800-565-9523 Her associations with the Coast Salish ever his two young sons pestered him as Visit our booth during the Congress Book Fair led to the publication of her book slanted to where he was going. Antonson’s father University of British Columbia, May 31st to June 7th towards children called The Flying Ca- would reply, “I’m going to Timbuktu to For more great reads check out our website at noe: Legends of the Cowichans (Victoria: get my haircut.” J. Parker Buckle Printing, 1949). She http://www.blackrosebooks.net Some fifty years later, Antonson’s long- died in Welland, Ontario, in 1980. imagined journey was undertaken in the Cryer’s contributions to coastal eth- wake of his participation in the successful nology were subsequently edited by bid to procure the 2010 Winter Olym- Chris Arnett for Two Houses Half- pics for Vancouver/Whistler. “We were Buried in Sand: Oral Traditions of the stuck. Everyone in the Land Cruiser Hul’q’umi’num’ Coast Salish of Kuper jumped to the ground to lighten the load. Wreck Beach TRANSMONTANUS 16 Island and Vancouver Island Two weeks earlier I had used my hands (Talonbooks $24.95). 978-0-88922-555-8 to scuff snow from under the wheels of a by Carellin Brooks ✍ friend’s Jeep that had got stuck in Cana- In his memoir Alone Against the Arc- dian mountains. Now, I carved armfuls Find it here tic (Heritage $19.95), Anthony of sand from behind the Land Cruiser’s Dalton recalls making a near-fatal solo wheels to achieve the same effect. We Duthie Books on W. 4th Avenue voyage by small open boat pushed and the vehicle around the west and north lurched forward. We contin- Pulpfi ction on Main Street coasts of Arctic Alaska in the ued toward Essakane. Our ve- People’s Co-op Bookstore summer of 1984. hicle’s shocks abdicated. It Magpie Book & Magazine Gallery The narrative records his at- was an atrocious experience, Blackberry Books • Black Bond tempt to make a solo transit of and I loved it. These hours, UBC Bookstore • Book Warehouse the Northwest Passage in order as we bore north, were Chapters • Indigo Books + Music to appreciate the struggles of an among my most memorable arduous Arctic rescue mission experiences of the land—vast, chapters.indigo.ca • amazon.com undertaken by three U.S. offic- faraway, uncertain. It was Published by New Star Books ers from the cutter Bear in what I’d long envisioned Tim- 1897-98. The threesome set off Anthony Dalton buktu to be.” 978-1-55002-805-8

36 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 WHO’SWHOBC

is for Arden

Including images of the hockey riots of 1994 in downtown Vancouver and the occupation of the Post Office by the unemployed in the Depression, with text by Dieter Roelstraete and Russell Ferguson, Roy Arden, Against the Day (D&M $60) docu- ments and celebrates Roy Arden’s contributions to the rise of “post-concep- tual photography” from the West Coast in conjunction with a Vancouver Art Gallery exhibit. 978-1-55365-333-2 is for Benjamin

Formerly publisher of Polestar Books, Michelle Benjamin has been vol- unteering in a PHOTO development Michelle Benjamin

project in TWIGG Máncora, a small village on the north coast of Peru, accompanied by her part- ner Maggie Mooney and daugh- ter Caitlin Mooney-Fu. Recently UBC Press contributed funds for a new water pump for the village. Benjamin has also edited a new collection of environ- mental essays by 20 writers, scientists and activists, A Passion for the Earth (Greystone $21) in conjunction with the David Suzuki Foundation. 978-1-55365-375-2

is for Chudley

Written before an English couple made world headlines following the Roy Arden’s Self-Portrait #1 (1981) from Against the Day mysterious disappearance of their daughter in Portugal, Ron Chudley’s young son who has inexplicably disap- third novel Stolen (Touchwood $12.95) peared during an overnight stop in the explores the frightening scenario of a Fraser Canyon. After a coroner’s verdict is for Dumont is for Evans father desperately hoping to find his determines death occurred by drown- ing, even though no A former creative writing teacher at Stanley Evans’s three novels fea- body is recovered, John SFU and Kwantlen College, Marilyn ture a Coast Salish detective named Silas Quarry continues to Dumont, a descendant of the Red Seaweed, formerly employed by Victoria’s search for his son, River freedom fighter Gabriel Serious Crimes Unit. The first, Seaweed Nate, fuelled by a blind Dumont, continues to assert the legiti- on the Street (2005), involved the disap- faith that his son is macy of her Cree/Métis ancestry. pearance of a billionaire’s daughter. In Sea- alive. The father is ar- Dumont’s third poetry title, that weed on Ice (2006), Seaweed investigated rested and nearly mur- tongued belonging the sale in Victoria of Nazi loot that dered as he struggles to (Kegedonce Press $15), was confiscated from Jews during absolve his guilt and has won Poetry Book of World War II. Seaweed under Wa- PHOTO wrestle with his fears. the Year and the ter (Touchwood $12.95) involves Think Harrison McNally Robinson an underwater vision quest after ENRIGHT Ford in The Fugitive, Aboriginal Book of the party girl Jane Colby is found BLAISE

/ set in the Fraser Can- Year Award at the most drowned, with strangulation marks yon and the Alberta recent Aboriginal Book on her neck. 978-1-894898-57-7 PETERSON

Ron Chudley badlands. Awards. Marilyn Dumont

978-1-894898-59-1 0-9731396-9-2 BARRY continued on page 38

37 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 WHO’SWHO

Leonard Frank’s photo “Roundup of Japanese Fishing Vessels at Annieville, 1942,” from Nikkei Fishermen on the BC Coast

continued from page 37 is for Fukawa is for Harrop Graham Harrop of North Van- Masako Fukawa served as the couver has contributed the main writer and managing editor for “BackBench” panel cartoon for The Nikkei Fishermen on the BC Coast: Globe and Mail since 1988. Also an edi- Their Biographies and Photographs torial cartoonist for The Vancouver Sun (Harbour $39.95). To ensure the sacri- and a past winner of a British Columbia fices and hardships endured by older Newspaper Award for editorial fishermen are never forgotten, along cartooning, Harrop has gathered some with the confiscation of their boats and of his best work for The BackBench Col- Jade Bell the forced dispersal of Japanese Cana- lection (Ronsdale $14.95). 978-1-55380-053-8 dians from the B.C. Coast in 1942, the Nikkei Fishermen Reunion Committee gathered and edited 3,524 names and 750 biographies and photographs for this memorial volume. 978-1-55017-436-6

is for Goldberg

Having explored Taoism and practiced a 66-move sequence of a mar- tial art form called Liuhebafa, Kim From The Backbench Collection Goldberg has written Ride Back- wards on Dragon: A Poet’s Journey through Liuhebafa (Leaf Press $18.95). “I am naught but a beginner in all is for Irvine things and hope to stay that way— Andrew Irvine of UBC is the au- open,” she writes. thor of Socrates on Trial (UTP $17.95), Liuhebafa arose a new stage play that combines views of from a philoso- Socrates for both theatrical and edu- pher and math- cational purposes. It’s one of his “lighter” Kim Goldberg ematician in works. Irvine, a former president of BC north-central China, in approximately Civil Liberties, has also edited Bertrand 900 A.D., whose ideas were developed Russell: Critical Assessments and Mistakes by a scholar and martial artist named Li of Reason: Essays in Honour of John Woods. Dongfeng some 300 years later. 978-0-8020-9538-1 Kim Goldberg’s frank narratives fre- quently detour towards humour. “Dear Ovaries, It was great seeing you guys last is for Jack week! And that trans-vaginal ultrasound was quite the thrill ride. Thanks. But For a community healing project, what were you thinking going all cysty Agnes Jack of the Shuswap First Na- like that on the right? You two are a real tion edited testimonials from 32 indi- laugh riot. Have I not been good to you? viduals about their experiences within Shown you respect? Attended every the Kamloops Indian Residential School stitch-n-bitch session? Vowed to steer (1893 to 1979). A new edition of Be- clear of Hormone Replacement Therapy hind Closed Doors: Stories from the no matter how sweaty I get? / You’re not Kamloops Indian Residential School still mad about that no-kids thing are (Theytus $26.95) has brought those Carole Gerson you? Like dudes, get over it already!” memories of the school back into print. 978-0-9783879-1-4 978-1-894778-41-1

38 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 WHO’SWHO

Fence Riding (Oolichan $16.95) and he has co-edited Tropes and Territories is for Kishkan (McGill-Queen’s $80) with Marta Dvorak, a collection of short fiction Wistful reminiscences of romantic and postcolonial readings featuring es- times in Ireland during her 20s, as well says on writers such as Rohinton as a memoir of returning there 23 years Mistry, David Malouf, and Witi later with her son, in 2001, are the high- Ihimaera. lights in Theresa Kishkan’s Phan- Fence 978-0-88982-236-8; Tropes 978-0-77353-289-2 tom Limb (Thistledown $15.95), a collection of self-reflective essays and po- etic narratives. It also includes a lovely piece about searching for Granite Creek, is for Outram an interior community founded in 1885. 978-1-897235-31-7 Born in 1864, English clergyman James Outram was a militia officer (in Afghanistan), zoologist and world traveller who made numerous mountain- eering ascents in the Rockies and Columbias in 1900, 1901 and 1902. In the Heart of the Rockies (Rocky Moun- tain $22.95) is a re-issued 1905 classic that records his adventures in B.C. and Alberta. He lived in Calgary prior to his death in Victoria on March 12, 1925. “At what point is a place 978-1-894765-96-1 simply erased from a map in its literal sense? All over British Columbia there are

significant town sites which PHOTO

hold only ghosts of their is for Page SHAW

former selves.” –— THERESA KISHKAN KEITH P.K. Page has crafted an enticing children’s tale about a baker who learns is for Lorimer that money can’t buy happiness in Jake, The Baker, Makes A Cake (Oolichan This year’s recipient of the Gray $19.95). As he tries to marry the beau- Campbell Award recognizing an out- tiful daughter of his cranky boss, Jake standing contribution to the literary com- consents to literally sell his own happi- munity is Rowly Lorimer, ness to Mr. Jeremiah, only to become co-founder of the Canadian Centre for miserable in the process. Illustrated by Studies in Publishing at SFU and main- Ruth Campbell, this tales has plenty stay of its Master in of plot twists, culminating in a very spe- Publishing pro- cial wedding cake. 978-088982-245-0 gram. As well, the Heritage House consortium, led by is for Quadra Rodger and Pat Touchie, will receive the At long last, At the Far Reaches of Rowland Lorimer annual Jim Doug- Empire (UBC Press $85) by Free- las Award to recognize outstanding pub- man M. Tovell provides an in-depth lishing achievements. In recent years career profile of the pre-eminent Span- Heritage has added several imprints to ish sea captain who explored the Pacific become one of the major publishers of Northwest prior to 1800, Peruvian-born books specifically for and about B.C. The Juan Francisco de la Bodega award is named for the founder of J.J. y Quadra. Quadra’s reputation suf- Douglas Ltd., the company that evolved fers because there is no genuine portrait into Douglas & McIntyre. of him, a fate that has also befallen the remarkable pathfinder David Thompson. Tovell, a former diplomat who served is for McPhail in Peru, points out that his subject is more commonly known as Bodega or else Accounts of 81 fish species are pro- Bodega y Quadra in Spain, United vided for biologists, naturalists and con- States, Mexico and Peru. 9780774813662 servationists in J.D. McPhail’s 696-page The Freshwater Fishes of Brit- ish Columbia (University of Alberta $90) which details the scientific and common is for Ross names of each fish, distinguishing char- acteristics, origins, geographic distribu- Despite the demise of Raincoast’s tion, life-history, habitat-use, taxonomic publishing program, Jesse Ross’ and conservation comments. 978-0-88864-467-1 two latest titles, All-Star Sports Puzzles— Basketball (Raincoast $9.95) and All-Star Sports Puzzles—Hockey is for New (Raincoast $9.95) will still be avail- Ever prolific, recent Order of able from the Canada inductee W.H. (Bill) New Harry Potter folks. has added two more titles to his resume Basketball 978-1-55192-822-7; Hockey 978-1-55192-810-4 that includes some 46 titles. His latest collection of poetry is Along a Snake Jesse Ross continued on next page

39 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 WHO’SWHO continued from previous page roots, her girlhood ex- periences and her af- finity for life in is for Xtraordinary is for Shaw Canada in The Ever- green Country: A That’s the decision of author Karen Chris Shaw’s Five Ring Circus: Memoir of Vietnam X Tulchinsky, UBC English profes- Myths and Realities of the Olympic (Hagios $19.95). sor Glenn Deer and bookseller Games (New Society $19.95) promises In this uplifting Marc Fournier who have selected to be a scathing indictment of the proc- and articulate story of Michael Kluckner’s Vancouver Re- ess of acquiring the Olympics and also preserving dignity in membered (Whitecap) for this year’s City the motives of guys in suits who, Drapeau- the face of hardship, of Vancouver Book Award. like, have reassured everyone things can’t the retired French lit- go wrong, or over-budget. UBC profes- erature professor re- sor Shaw is a spokesperson for the No veals how Vietnam is a is for Yates Games 2010 Coalition and 2010 Watch. blend of indigenous, 978-0-86571-592-9 Chinese, French and J. Michael Yates has resurfaced Cover art for Five Ring Circus American influences. as Senior Editor of Libros Libertad, an 978-0-9783440-0-9 ambitious new literary imprint owned is for Tsimshian toxic reaction to the antibiotic Gen- by Manolis Aligizakis of White tamicin, which destroyed the hair folli- Rock. The press has issued Yates’ 548- Victoria’s Allan Hoover is one of cles in her inner ear, eliminating her page collection of his stage, radio and five co-authors of Tsimshian Treasures: body's equilibrium. Mallinson lives in is for Watada television plays, The Passage of Sono The Remarkable Journey of the West Vancouver and contributes essays Nis: Collected Plays by J. Michael Yates Ten years ago ’s 978-0-9781865-3-1 Dundas Collection (D&M $55), about to the Vocabula Review. 0-9736560-2-6 Terry Watada (Libros Libertad $34.95). the 80 Tsimshian ceremonial objects stories in Daruma Days (Ronsdale bought from missionary William $14.95) recalled life in the internment Duncan by Reverend Robert J. camps of World War II in the B.C. is for Zuehlke Dundas of Scotland in 1863. This so- is for Vuong-Riddick interior, focussing on the Issei, the first called Dundas Collection was recently generation of Japanese-Canadian immi- Canada’s liberation of western Hol- auctioned in New York for the Dundas Born in Hanoi in 1940 and educated grants. The Issei are again his subject in land and the crucial estuary was its family, reaping more than $7 million. in Saigon and the novel Kuroshio (Arsenal $21.95), bloodiest campaign in World War II but 978-1-55365-332-5 Paris, multi-lin- the name given to the tide that brought its blow-by-blow progress has been hith- gual Thuong Japanese immigrants to North America. erto under-appreciated. Now Mark Vuong- This time Watada follows the fate of Zuehlke has extensively documented is for Unbalanced Riddick shares a woman who is brought to Vancouver the 55-day, mud-soaked struggle of the her Vietnamese to marry a man she has never seen. Es- First Canadian Army in 1944 to open Anna Jean Mallinson's Terra caping from her loveless marriage and the Antwerp coast for Allied shipping Infirma: A Life Unbalanced (Windshift Thuong Vuong- poverty, she becomes embroiled in the in Terrible Victory: First Canadian Press $17.95) provides a personal ac- Riddick , age 4, underground gang of a ruthless crime Army and the Scheldt Estuary Cam- count of the author's experience with a Hanoi, 1944 boss. 978-1-155152-233-3 paign (D&M $37.95). 978-01-55365-227-4

The Wacky Ways We Name Young Animals by Diane Swanson illustrated by Mariko Ando Spencer

In a book that’s sure to grab young animal enthusiasts and language lovers alike, B.C. author Diane Swanson describes 11 animals and the words we use for their young. “... a fun read ... also an excellent way to increase young children’s vocabulary and to introduce them to the richness of language. Highly Recommended.” —CM Reviews

www.annickpress.com Also available excellence & innovation in children’s literature Available from your favourite bookstore

Part memoir, part analysis, and Banyen Books presents part manifesto! Governor General’s NEALE MARION WOODMAN Award winner Joe Rosenblatt deftly links poetry to the DONALD WALSCH & ROBERT BLY –Conversations with God author personalities of Milton Acorn, AGING & THE HAPPIER THAN GOD— Gwendolyn MacEwen, John Clare, UNLIVED LIFE— Turn Ordinary Life into an The Soul’s Quest forWholeness Christopher Smart, Sylvia Plath, Extraordinary Experience • Sat., April 5 $25 7:30pm and other troubled poets who • TALK & BOOKSIGNING— Christ Church Cathedral scholars have termed Wed., March 19 • Sun., April 6 $140 10–5 7:30pm $15 First Nation’s Longhouse, UBC Poets of the Asylum. Canadian Memorial Church, • POETRY w/ ROBERT BLY April 4 1806 W. 15th at Burrard 7:30pm $18 Unitarian Church, 49th & Oak Available at bookstores and direct from the publisher at www.ExileEditions.com Banyen3608 West 4th BOoks Avenue ISBN 978-1-55096-098-3 Books 604-732-7912 Music/Gifts/Tickets 604-737-8858 $22.95 Out-of-town orders 1-800-663-8442 Open Mon-Fri 10-9, Sat 10-8, Sun 11-7 www.banyen.com for reviews, author events & our entire inventory

40 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008 LAST WORDS

DON’T CALL ME—ISHMAEL OBITS

Truth of boy soldier story called into question Jeani Read (1947-2007) he authenticity of Ishmael mares.... But this does raise questions Daughter of author Elfreida Read, Beah’s boy soldier memoir A about the way Ishmael Beah’s book came Jeani Read was born in Shanghai and TLong Way Gone—which topped about and how thoroughly his story was moved to Vancouver when she was very the BC Bestseller List for much of 2007 checked out.” young. Read started writing for The %"! " !" #"$ and was featured on the cover of BC Coverage of Beah’s book in BC Province newspaper in 1973 and be- P      BookWorld’s summer issue—has been BookWorld expressed some scepticism came its first rock music critic. She later   Q found lacking by Aus- about the impressive became a columnist for the newspaper, O  tralian media. and worthwhile writing on contemporary manners and
     In January, The memoir: “Can we re- morality. These articles were collected
     N Australian reported ally trust him as our and published as Endless Summers and !"#$%#&$%%$' Beah likely fought for guide? Is he telling us Other Shared Hallucinations (Flight only a few months in everything that hap- Press) in 1985. She also collaborated the Sierra Leone army, pened to him. We are with her husband, the screenwriter and A TIMELY BOOK not two years as de- being escorted playwright Michael Mercer, on a scribed in his book, through a nightmare number of short TV dramas, one of and he seemingly has by someone we still which was nominated for a Gemini PHOTO lied about being vic- don’t really award. She died from complications AAA timized at age 12. know…This is a very arising from esophageal cancer, on De-

These revelations TRIPPLE important book. But it cember 21, 2007. / doesn’t tell the truth, came to light after one Ishmael Beah: of Ishmael Beah’s rela- the whole truth, and Leila Vennewitz Lost ‘n’ found SAWCHUK

tives read the book ‘n’ lost again nothing but the truth.” (1912-2007) LAURA and tried to contact A Long Way Gone Born in Hampshire, England in him via his New York publisher. Repre- debuted at #2 on The New York Times 1912, Leila Vennewitz, the English lan- sentatives of Beah have since rebuffed bestseller list and Time made it Number guage translator of Heinrich Boll, lived efforts to validate claims made in the 3 on its Top Ten list of non-fiction books quietly and largely unheralded in Van- book. of 2007. Starbucks chose it for its book $14.95 couver for more than 50 years, prima- ISBN 142513554-4 The Australian noted: “If confirmed, club and donates $2 to UNICEF for rily in the West End, near Lost Lagoon. Order online at: the revelations do not mean Beah’s tale every book they sell. In November, Beah She pioneered the ability of translators www.trafford.com/07-1386 isn’t truly terrible. They don’t mean that was appointed UNICEF Advocate for or to gain copyright for their own transla- [email protected] he hasn’t been through experiences that Children Affected by War. tions. Leila Vennewitz died on August or most of us in the developed world will Life expectancy in Sierra Leone in 8, 2007. Phone: 604-521-0378 (author) never have to face even in our night- the year 2000 was 25.9. It is now 41.

         
 

           

    
                   


    
 

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)))*+  +  ) *  ,+ + , 

INDEX to Advertisers Annick Press...40 Fernwood Publishing...36 Now or Never Publishing...17 Shuswap Lake Writers’ Festival...30 Anvil Press...10, 26, 34, 40 Friesens Printers...41 Oolichan Books...17 Sono Nis Press...14 Arsenal Pulp Press...12 Galiano Island Books...33 Orca Books...25 Talonbooks...2, 3 Banyen Books...40 George Ryga Award...41 Penguin Books...20, 39 Temeron/Detselig...26 Bjork Publishing...35 Granville Island Publishing...41 People’s Co-Op Books...41 Thistledown Press...34 Black Rose Books...36 Harbour Publishing...44 Playwrights Canada Press...26 Thomson, Ann...42 Bolen Books...28 Heritage House...7 Positive Connections...26 Toppermost Books...42 Book Warehouse...38 Herzog, S.M....34 Printorium...41 UBC Press...18 Boswell, David...10 Hignell Printing...41 Raven Publishing...26 Vancouver Desktop...41 Crown Publications...28 Island Mountain Arts...30 REAL Society...30 Wilfrid Laurier Press...17 Douglas College/EVENT...33 LAMMAR Printing...43 Ronsdale Press...16 Wolsak & Wynn...26 Douglas College...10 Leaf Press...36 Royal BC Museum...5 Yoka’s Coffee...28 Ekstasis Editions...12 Libros Libertad Publishing...35 Save-On Foods...28 Ellis, David...41 Locke, Steve...42 SFU Pubworks...30 TO ADVERTISE and reach Exile Editions...40 Lovett Pictures...42 SFU Writing & Publishing...18 100,000 readers just CALL Federation of BC Writers...30 New Society...8 Sidney Booktown...34 Fernie Writers Conference...31 New Star Books...26, 34, 36 Signature Editions...42 604-736-4011

42 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008